
Class JiGc^5>5i 
Book_-JAj5EQa 
Copyright N° 



COPyRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The De Vinne Press certifies that this copy- 
is one of an edition of ten thousand copies 
printed by order of the Board of Directors 
of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of 
the United States. 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 




B ^ 5 » 



NEW YORK 

PRINTED AT THE DE VINNE PRESS 

1901 



THE H«HA«Y OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Co«e8 REcavED 

JAN. m ^902 

OPVfMQHT ENTRY 



XXa No 







Copyright, 1 901, by 

The Equitable Life Assurance Society 

OF THE United States 



V 



o 



PREFACE 



This book is not a biography ; it is merely a gather- 
V ing together of reminiscences which might otherwise 

be lost. Not until a detailed history of the first forty 
years of the Equitable Society has been written can 
the story of the life of its founder be adequately told. 

An appendix has been added to the sketch in which 
will be found, among other interesting material, the 
reminiscences of a number of Mr. Hyde's early asso- 
ciates and others competent to judge of his character 
and achievements. Quotations have been freely made 
from some of these papers. 

The book is published in accordance with a resolu- 
tion of the Board of Directors of the Equitable Life 
Assurance Society of the United States, adopted May 
lo, 1899, which reads as follows: 



Resolved^ That Messrs. James W. Alexander, James H. Hyde, and 
William Alexander be appointed a committee to supervise the 
preparation, in behalf of this Board, of a historical sketch of the 
life of Mr. Hyde, to be published by the Society. 



8 PREFACE 

The Board also adopted, on the same date, the fol- 
lowing resolutions : 

Resolved, That in testimony of our recognition of the great and 
noble work accomplished by Henry B. Hyde for the Equitable 
Society, and for the cause of hfe assurance in the United States and 
throughout the world, a portrait statue of Mr. Hyde, designed by a 
competent sculptor, executed in the best manner, and composed 
of appropriate materials, be erected to his memory by this Society 
in the Grand Central Hall on the ground floor of the Equitable 
Building, and that on the base of this monument a suitable inscrip- 
tion be placed certifying to the fact that he was the creator and 
founder of the Society. 

Resolved, That the vignette designed under Mr. Hyde's direction, 
when the Equitable Society was organized, to embellish the head- 
ings of its pohcies, personifying Life Assurance as the protector of 
the widow and orphan, be incorporated in the design forming the 
heading of all pohcies issued by this Society hereafter, and that 
under this vignette the following words, " Henry Baldwin Hyde, 
Founder, July 26, 1859," be inscribed, as a permanent record 
and memorial of his life's work in behalf of the Society which he 
created, and which has prospered under his guidance and care for 
a period of nearly forty years. 



" My rule in everything that is 
to be done, from writing a let- 
ter to planning an important 
business, is to use my best skill, 
regardless of time, engage- 
ments, and everything else. 
This rule has governed my 
labors for the Equitable." 
Henry B. Hyde. 
December 29, 1897. 



CHAPTER I 



EARLY TRAINING 



Henry Baldwin Hyde was born in the village of 
Catskill, New York, on the 15th of February, 1834, 
where his father, Henry Hazen Hyde, was actively 
engaged in mercantile business. Their American 
ancestor was William Hyde of England, who, in 1633, 
crossed the ocean and became one of the settlers of 
Norwichtown in Connecticut, where he died in Janu- 
ary, 1 68 1. His descendants, actuated by the restless 
spirit which has scattered the sons of New England 
throughout the country, and contributed to it the 
sterling qualities of that blood, pushed westward for 
the betterment of fortune ; and one branch estab- 
lished itself on the undulating banks of the Hudson, 
at the foot-hills of the Catskill Mountains. 

To the village school, which his father had at- 
tended, young Hyde went to receive instruction from 
the schoolmaster, John C. Johnson, who had been his 
fathers preceptor. Of those early days Mr. Hyde 
said little beyond that he well remembered going, as a 



12 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

boy, to the small dock at Catskill Landing and wist- 
fully watching the boats sail for New York, wonder- 
ing whether the time would ever come when he, 
too, should go to the great city at the mouth of the 
river. 

When he attained the age of sixteen, a desire to 
seek fortune in New York city inspired him. He re- 
solved to go forth and become an actor in the great 
theater of commercial life of which he had heard so 
much. 

Even to the Catskills, in and about this time, which 
was during the year 1850, when conveniences of travel 
were not so many as they are to-day, there came cer- 
tain letters and documents explaining life assurance, 
and dwelling upon its benefits. Among those who were 
impressed by the information thus given of a growing 
industry, then comparatively new in the United States, 
was the schoolmaster, John C. Johnson. He w^as a 
tall, active man, with long gray hair and a command- 
ing personality. He was a good talker, and becoming 
desirous of enlisting in the new occupation, he secured 
a contract as an agent of the Mutual Life Insurance 
Company of New York, then in its eighth year. At 
once he prevailed upon Henry Hazen Hyde to enlist 
in the service of the same company; and so, in 1850, 
the records show that from the village of Catskill three 
persons set forth — a schoolmaster and pupils of two 
generations, who, within ten years, were to make their 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



13 



separate and distinctive marks on the business of life 
assurance.^ 

Young Hyde, finding no opening for himself in 
New York, went to Honesdale, Pennsylvania, where 
he remained for a few months ; but before the 
close of the year 1850 he returned to the city and 
secured a clerkship in the mercantile house of Mer- 
ritt, Ely & Co., where he remained for two years. 
Mr. William A. Wheelock, one of the Equitable So- 
ciety's directors, says : *' My first acquaintance with 
Mr. Hyde was during the two years previous to his 
employment by the Mutual Life Insurance Company. 
It was early in the fifties that he came to the firm of 
Merritt, Ely 81 Co., who were in the importing and job- 
bing dry-goods trade, and into which firm I had then 
been admitted as a partner, after having served with 
them for five years, beginning immediately after gradu- 
ating from the New York University. My department 
in the business called me to reside in Manchester, 
England, during the entire period of Mr. HviKe's clerk- 
ship in our house, as I had charge of th'lj^^chase of 
foreign goods, and it was only twice during each year 
that I came to this country, remaining about a month 
on each occasion. During such visits I met Mr. Hyde 
frequently, and had a very pleasant acquaintance with 

1 Mr. Johnson, after some years of through various changes, became, 

experience with the Mutual Life, in 1865, the Northwestern Mutual 

went West, and in 1858 started Life Insurance Company of Mil- 

a company which, after passing waukee. 



14 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



him. He entered heartily into the business, in which, 
of course, he occupied a subordinate position, as he was 
one of the youngest clerks. He has frequently stated 
to me that the foundation of his success was due to the 
strict discipline which he was under during those two 
years. He was an efficient clerk, and most agreeable 
personally, and even at that period of his life gave 
great promise of what his future was to be. Those 
who knew him then had no difficulty in predicting for 
him great success. Even at that early day his active 
brain seemed to foresee the very great opportunity 
which later on presented itself in the life assurance 
business, and it was this which led him to enter a field 
which in his judgment promised such great results. 
From that period until his death my acquaintance with 
him and my affection for him were of the most delight- 
ful character." 

In January, 1852, young Hyde obtained a subordi- 
nate position in the office of the Mutual Life Insurance 
Company. In the same year his father was appointed 
by the Board of Trustees '' as the agent of this com- 
pany," and was commissioned by the president to go 
forth and ''visit many cities and towns of the United 
States for the purpose of extending a knowledge of 
the strength and high standing of the company, to 
confer with agents already appointed, to select others, 
and to inspire all with energy and zeal in their efforts 
to seek applications for life insurance." He was the 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 15 

right man to do this missionary service ; for he was a 
natural negotiator, fluent in speech, earnest in persua- 
sion, and beHeving that Hfe assurance, next to the 
Gospel, was the one thing that all men needed. 

Meanwhile his son was rising in the esteem of the 
trustees of the company, who in due time appointed 
him to the responsible position of cashier. It has 
been frequently stated that it was to the experience he 
acquired during his service of seven years in the 
office of the Mutual Life, that Mr. Hyde was in- 
debted for his first knowledge of the assurance busi- 
ness. But this is not strictly true. It was from two 
or three of the principal agents of the company, 
notably from his father, that he gained that compre- 
hensive knowledge of life assurance which guided 
him in the inception of his life-work. He listened 
to their experiences; from their reports he gathered 
the most valuable information obtainable ; he under- 
stood what buyers of assurance sought; he learned 
to appreciate the labors of soliciting agents. He 
studied the theory as well as the practice of life as- 
surance, and thoroughly understood the relation be- 
tween buyer and seller, the assured and the assurer. 
He noticed that the existing companies could not ac- 
cept all the business offered to them, some having 
limited their risks on a single life to $5000; while 
the limit of the Mutual Life Insurance Company was 
$10,000, and its agents were frequently compelled 



i6 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

to go elsewhere to place many of their applications. 
In these facts he saw that there was room for another 
company to catch the large overflow of business. Re- 
flecting upon them, he sought and followed the advice 
of his father. Thus destiny reserved for the youngest 
of the three who traveled from Catskill to New York 
in 1850 the great work of founding the Equitable 
Life Assurance Society of the United States, in 1859. 
His father deserves at least a passing notice. He 
had become the representative of the Mutual Life in 
Boston, where he subsequently managed with great 
success a general life assurance agency, offering risks 
to the Mutual, the Equitable, the Washington, and other 
companies that were competent to accept them. His 
activity is described in a letter to his son : '' I come to 
my office in State Street at eight o'clock ; I work with 
all my might ; at two o'clock I dine ; I work until half- 
past six o'clock ; I go home tired in body and mind ; 
I rest, and doze, and retire to bed at half-past nine ; 
arise at five ; at half-past five I mount a spirited horse 
with a good friend, and we dash off ten miles, return- 
ing in one and a half hours." He did as large a busi- 
ness (considering the circumstances of his time) as any 
life assurance agent is doing to-day. In a letter to his 
son, April 8, 1863, he says: *' I rejoice at the continued 
success of your company. I have just looked to see 
what amount I have sent you in cash, which is consid- 
erable in bearing you forward : 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 17 

Premiums 

1859 $11,527.87 

i860 11,395.70 

1861 21,905.54 

1862 25,453.09 

1863 to March 31 9,260.12 

$79^542.32 

One loss by death, $3000. It needs great wisdom 
and carefulness in your management to secure a 
steady onward movement. Relapse and reaction are 
formidable to encounter." In a letter of November, 
1863, he says to his son: ** I have done about one 
fifth of your entire business, policies and cash receipts. 
. . . Let me ask : Is there not danger in paying too 
great commissions? It shows itself, of course, in ex- 
penses." 

His letters show that he had peculiar qualifications 
for the business in which he was engaged. *' Dear 
Henry," he writes in 1863: '* I send you a splendid 
application for $10,000— C. C. Chadwick, a retired 
gentleman of wealth. He has $10,000 in the Mutual 
and $10,000 in the New England. I met him this 
morning as I came down-town. I said to him : ' I 
would like to show you that you cannot invest money 
in a way that is safer beyond a contingency, where it 
will work out so large a result to yourself if you reach 
the age of sixty-five, as in an endowment policy of the 
Equitable Life Assurance Society. If I establish that 
fact I shall expect your prompt action with reference 



i8 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

to that result' He smiled and said: 'Very well, I'll 
see.' I went to his counting-room without delay, and 
showed him what I had proposed to show. He 
promptly replied : ' You may as well make out the 
papers.' " In another letter he says: '' Dear Henry: 
I took applications to-day in high quarters for $50,000. 
I send you $20,000. One State Street gentleman, 
Gage, the great ice-shipper, came in saying, * I have 
seen your circular; I want to inquire about it.' I 
never saw him before. I took his application for 
$20,000." 

The relations between father and son were such as 
might exist between an elder and a younger brother. 
In a public acknowledgment of his fathers services 
the son paid tribute in these words : *' In the begin- 
ning of our enterprise I constantly consulted my father, 
and it was to a large extent owing to his advice, 
based upon his great experience, that no mistakes 
were made in our early history." 

i During his clerkship with the Mutual Life young 
Hyde connected himself with the Fifth Avenue Presby- 
terian Church, one of the most prominent congrega- 
tions in the city, then occupying an edifice on the 
corner of Fifth Avenue and Nineteenth Street. Its 
pastor was the Rev. James W. Alexander, D.D., eldest 
son of Professor Archibald Alexander of Princeton, 
and here he made the acquaintance of a number of 
men of substance and high standing, some of whom 




AT TWENTY-TWO YEARS OF AGE 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



19 



afterwards became directors of the Equitable Society. 
But with the pastor's son, James W. Alexander, then a 
junior at Princeton College, there sprang up a friend- 
ship which increased in firmness with passing years. 
In his reminiscences he says : J 

** Mr. Hyde, during part of this early interval, lived 
in East Twenty-sixth Street, and for a short time I, 
being a bachelor in New York without family con- 
nections living there, became a fellow-occupant of the 
same house. He was then working night and day, 
and had nothing on his mind but the Equitable, un- 
less I make the exception that he became engaged to 
be married, and was married in March, 1864, I being 
one of his groomsmen on that occasion. The fashion 
in those days was not, as it is now, to have a best 
man and ushers, but simply to h,ave groomsmen equal in 
number to the bridesmaids who waited upon the bride." 

Mr. Hyde is described at that time as being **tall in 
stature and strong of limb, handsome in .feature and 
singularly bright in expression. His mouth was pecu- 
liarly expressive. His eyes, which were dark, and 
gleamed from beneath heavy eyebrows, arrested in- 
stant attention. They were keen, alert, and it is 
scarcely a figure of speech to say that they pierced 
like a sword." He impressed his individuality upon 
the social life around him, and even at this early 
period he showed in his daily walk and conversation 
a peculiar power to charm and to persuade men. 



CHAPTER II 

GERMINATION OF A NEW PROJECT 

And so the young cashier of the Mutual, pondering 
upon the questions suggested to his alert and active 
mind, talked the matter over with his friends. Most 
of them sought to dissuade him from his purpose; but, 
nevertheless, upon a memorable evening, that of Satur- 
day, March 12, 1859, he called upon Mr. Frederick 
S. Winston, President of the Mutual Life Insurance 
Company, at his residence. He stated to Mr. Win- 
ston that for some time he had been contemplating the 
organization of a life assurance company, and desired 
his advice and assistance in the undertaking. Twenty- 
five years later Mr. Hyde related how this proposition 
was received : 

*'The president stated that he did not approve of the 
plan, and that no one contemplating the organization 
of another life assurance company could retain a posi- 
tion with the Mutual Life. I thereupon asked him how 
soon my resignation could be accepted ; to which he 
replied that I might resign at once, and could call at 

20 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 21 

the office on Monday morning to deliver up the keys 
of the cash and securities in my possession, which 
would be examined by the actuaries. This action, 
which was equivalent to a dismissal, was wholly unex- 
pected by me. On the following Monday morning I 
called at the office of the company and delivered up 
my keys. The cash and securities having been ex- 
amined by the actuaries and found correct, I said to 
the president that it would be very gratifying to me to 
have a letter stating the facts regarding my sudden 
and unexpected resignation, and further stating that 
my cash and securities had been found correct. This 
was refused." 

In commenting on this statement, President James 
W. Alexander says: ''It is not to be gathered from 
this incident that hostility continued to exist through- 
out the lives of these two forceful men. Mr. Win- 
ston's method was severe, and it was not within the 
limits of his conception that this clerk could become 
a rival. Indeed, it took some years for him to realize 
what stuff young Hyde was made of, and he was 
inclined to regard the Equitable Life in its infancy 
as a frivolous interference with settled affairs. His 
regard for the young man personally, however, was 
not extinguished, and Mr. Hyde himself ever re- 
vered Mr. Winston as a sort of Nestor in the craft. 
The stimulus of desire to cope with the Mutual Life 
after the abrupt close of his connection was a powerful 



22 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

element in his after success; but when the newer com- 
pany had forced recognition from the older one, as a 
peer, the ancient affection between these two men not 
only revived, but was strengthened, and the friendship 
lasted until Mr. Winston's death." 

In order to appreciate fully the feelings which 
rose in the breast of young Hyde that Saturday ♦ 
evening, some forty years ago, the reader should, 
for a moment, efface the impression made by events 
of subsequent years. Mr. Hyde had entered the 
employ of the Mutual Life, entertaining, probably, 
hopeful anticipations of a promising career in its ser- 
vice ; and he left it as if he were a discharged servant. 
That he was surprised by the result of his visit to Mr. 
Winston, his own words indicate ; indeed, there is 
a tinge of sadness in them: *'This action, which 
was equivalent to a dismissal, was wholly unex- 
pected by me." 

Some men are put to rout by surprises, others are 
overwhelmed by the unexpected. To men cast in the 
mold of heroes, surprise stimulates the faculties ; the 
unexpected presents opportunities. And Henry B. 
Hyde was such a man.^ 

Once free from the duties of his former position, his 

1 Miss Ellen E. Hallet, who knew the intensity of his nature upon his 

Mr. Hyde as an inmate of her life's work, and his busy brain 

mother's house when he was mak- seemed to know no rest. When 

ing plans to establish the Equitable forced to take a few days' recreation, 

Society, says : " He entered with all one of his favorite ways was to go 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 23 

quick mind discerned the path he should follow, and 
he decided to take the first step at once. **The same 
day," he writes some twenty years after, *' I rented 
one room in the rear of the second story of No. 98 
Broadway, at the rate of $900 per annum. This 
was immediately furnished with borrowed furni- 
ture in anticipation of an order to be given to pur- 
chase furniture when the Society should be established. 
In order to make everything agreeable and cheerful 
for visitors, I purchased a box of cigars and placed 
them in a convenient position on the mantelpiece. On 
the succeeding Monday a sign, about thirty feet in 
length, with the inscription, 'The Equitable Life As- 
surance Society of the United States,' was placed 
directly over the smaller sign of the Mutual Life, which 
company, at that time, occupied the first floor of the 
same building. Our room had lawyers' offices on 
either side of it, and to obtain possession, a boy from 
the office on one side and a boy from the office on the 
other side were given desk-room within our restricted 
quarters. More commodious and convenient offices 
might have been secured elsewhere, but it was with 
me a sentiment to have the office of the Society 
above the office of the Mutual Life. At this time 

on board a pilot-boat and share its whole life. . . . He was very- 
rough life for a while. . . . His affectionate, sympathetic, and ten- 
love for his mother was one of his der-hearted, as those who knew his 
most marked traits; her influence inner life can testify; a loyal and 
left a deep impression upon his devoted friend always." 



24 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



there was no organization, and there had been no 
promise on the part of any one to unite with me in 
forming a new company." 

In all the years that followed, there can be found no 
better indication of the marvelous characteristics of the 
founder of the Equitable Society than this incident 
shows. An unexpected condition had presented itself, 
and he met it fairly ; competition had been invited, 
and he challenged it openly by defying all competitors. 
Human nature had to be appealed to, and he placed 
"a box of cigars in a convenient place on the mantel- 
piece." But there had to be more than a sign thirty 
feet in length, a box of cigars in a convenient place, 
and borrowed furniture to establish an institution 
which must be authorized by law before it can engage 
in the business of assuring lives. 

At that time a capital of one hundred thousand 
dollars had to be raised and deposited with the State 
Controller in Albany before any life company could 
be formed; a charter and by-laws had to be written 
and a certificate of incorporation procured. It is not 
to be supposed that young Hyde lost sight of the 
facts that he possessed neither financial nor social in- 
fluence, and that he was only a young man attempting 
to establish a great business in the city of New York. 
Yet, such faith had he in himself and in his project 
that he set out with a stout heart to enlist the con- 
fidence of men of the highest standing in the com- 




f-i^^sir^^**' 



■iM-fc 




THE society's FIRST OFFICE 

No. 98 Broadway 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



25 



munlty, many of whom were of mature years and 
were occupying conspicuous stations in business life. 
To William G. Lambert, James M. Halsted, Thomas 
U. Smith, William Walker, Henry M. Alexander, 
Henry A. Hurlbut, Henry G. Marquand, and others 
he went, and won for his enterprise their encourage- 
ment and support. So impressed were these saga- 
cious men with the force, ability, and energy of the 
young man that they became at once actively inter- 
ested in his enterprise. 



V 



CHAPTER III 

ORGANIZATION OF THE EQUITABLE SOCIETY 

Nothing more frank, open, and delightful exists, 
giving the details incidental to the formation of a 
great enterprise, than Mr. Hyde's informal report, 
which he read to the directors on the occasion of the 
Society's celebration of its twenty-fifth anniversary. It 
says : " The first person spoken to regarding the 
organization was Dr. Edward W. Lambert, who in- 
troduced me to his father, Mr. William G. Lam- 
bert. Dr. Lambert informed me that his father was 
advised by Mr. Winston not to put his money into 
the new enterprise, as he felt confident that within a 
year the managers would be anxious to sell out to the 
Mutual Life. But, notwithstanding this, Mr. William 
G. Lambert gave me great assistance by introducing 
me to gentlemen of his acquaintance, and by helping 
me to secure directors and obtain subscriptions. Dr. 
Lambert was promised the position of physician of 
the Society, and agreed to raise $25,000 of the capital." 
The difiiculty experienced in raising the capital for 

26 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 27 

the Society was mainly due to the fact that it differed 
from the capital of any other class of corporations. It 
would be exposed to losses, and it was barred by the 
proposed charter of the Society from all profits save 
the legal rate of interest, namely, seven per cent, per 
annum. Mr. Hyde's report says: " It was proposed to 
organize the Society on the basis of paying legal in- 
terest upon the capital of $100,000, which was required 
by law. All profits were to be divided among the 
policy-holders, so that the Society should, in fact, be 
a mutual company. At the first meeting of the incor- 
porators, held in the offices of the Resolute Fire 
Insurance Company at No. 19 Nassau Street (the 
room at No. 98 Broadway being too small), a number 
of the incorporators, although they had signed the 
subscription paper agreeing to receive only seven per 
cent, endeavored to have the interest raised to ten per 
cent. The majority of those .present expressed them- 
selves in favor of this change. After the discussion 
had been continued for about an hour, and nearly 
every one present had stated his opinion, the question 
was called. I then rose, and stated that if this change 
were made the advantage of a mutual company would 
be greatly imperiled, and that I failed to see success 
in any other plan than the one laid out. Happily, the 
motion was lost ; the increase from seven to ten per 
cent, was not made, and those gentlemen who, at the 
time, were most urgent for the change congratulated 



28 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

me afterwards that I had allowed no amount of pres- 
sure to cause me to adopt a course which I did not see 
my way clear to carry out." 

Nothing is more characteristic of Mr. Hyde than 
the moderate manner in which he states this incident 
— one that involved the principle of absolute mutual- 
ity. He relates it with the easy grace of one who 
tells of an episode in which he has figured because it 
is in the history of the Society rather than because 
it was a strong scene in the drama of his own life. 
When it is remembered that on that memorable day 
the now great Equitable Society was a company in 
embryo, that the incorporators seated around the table 
were some of the foremost men in the business com- 
munity, and that the chief promoter of the enterprise 
was but twenty-five years old — the fact that he sat for 
"about an hour" listening to those who were in favor 
of a plan that would imperil his project becomes in- 
tensely interesting. ''I then rose," he says, ''and 
stated that if this change were made the advantage 
of a mutual company would be greatly imperiled." 
This is the quiet way in which Mr. Hyde relates the 
incident; but Mr. James W. Alexander testifies that 
Mr. Hyde's utterances were even more vigorous than 
he admitted in his report of the scene ; that, in short, 
he exclaimed, as he resumed his seat : *' Gentlemen, I 
have made up my mind that this company shall be a 
purely mutual company, and if this provision limiting 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



29 



the dividends on the capital to legal interest is not put 
into the charter, I will take my hat and walk out of 
this room, and shall have nothing further to do with 
the enterprise." Twenty- two members of the original 
board of directors were in attendance at that memor- 
able anniversary. 

'' Mr. Henry Day," continues Mr. Hyde, in the re- 
port, '' was promised the position of attorney if he could 
raise $25,000. Mr. Day, however, refused to sign a 
paper to this effect, and was loath to promise anything, 
but agreed to take the position of attorney, and said he 
would do what he could. After some delay, he hav- 
ing failed to make any great progress, I grew impa- 
tient, and told him that he must agree to take the sum 
mentioned, and, if necessary, advance any part of it 
which he could not place. To this he demurred. I 
then opened negotiations with Mr. Davison, of Messrs. 
Burrill, Davison & Burrill, who positively agreed to 
take $25,000 of the capital if he should be given the 
position of attorney. Upon mentioning these negotia- 
tions to Mr. Day, he gained fresh courage, and, with 
the assistance of Mr. Henry M. Alexander, his share 
of the capital was obtained. Dr. Lambert carried 
out his agreement to the letter. Although the sub- 
scription fell off about $20,000, the full $100,000 
required by law was finally raised and paid in, Mr. 
Henry G. Marquand generously advancing temporarily 
$18,000, as well as the premium and commission upon 



30 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



the United States government bonds, representing the 
capital deposited at Albany." 

Mr. Hyde says: ''I was obliged to assure my life 
in the Manhattan Life Insurance Company, and to 
assign the policy to a prominent stationer as security 
for the account-books, stationery, etc., amounting to 
about $3000, because of the disinclination of some of 
my associates to guarantee these expenditures. I did 
not dare to draw upon m.y slender purse to make at 
once all these payments. I did not know how long 
I should be compelled to pay my own expenses, as 
well as the expenses of the embryo society." 

The next step involved the election of directors. 
The first board consisted of 



Wm. C. Alexander, 
H. M. Alexander, 
George T. Adee, 
John Auchincloss, 
Benjamin E. Bates, 
James M. Beebe, 
Thomas A. Biddle, 
Robert Bliss, 
Wm. T. Blodgett, 
Henry V. Butler, 
Francis B. Cooley, 
Wayman Crow, 
Thomas A. Cummins, 
Henry Day, 
S. Frothingham, Jr., 
Henry J. Gardner, 
Dudley S. Gregory, 



Henry B. Hyde, 
James M. Halsted, 
E. J. Hawley, 
Irad Hawley, 
Moses A. Hoppock, 
Henry A. Hurlbut, 
Henry H. Hyde, 
J. L. Kennedy, 
Edwd. W. Lambert, 
Wm. G. Lambert, 
Daniel D. Lord, 
James Low, 
B. F. Manierre, 
Peter McMartin, 
E. Spencer Miller, 
John T. Moore, 
Geo. D. Morgan, 
H. G. Marquand, 



J. F. de Navarro, 
Geo. T. Olyphant, 
S. H. Phillips, 
B. F. Randolph, 
John Slade, 
Thos. U. Smith, 
S. R. Spaulding, 
Geo. H. Stuart, 
Henry S. Terbell, 
Dwight Townsend, 
Alanson Trask, 
William Walker, 
W. Whitewright, Jr., 
Wilmot WilHams, 
Alexander Young, 
Henry Young, 
Thos. S. Young. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 31 

The directors elected Mr. William C. Alexander 
president, and Mr. Henry B. Hyde vice-president and 
manager. *' It was the original intention of the incor- 
porators," said Mr. Hyde, "that I should be the first 
president of the Society ; but Mr. William G. Lam- 
bert called upon me and stated that a much better 
organization had been secured than in the beginning 
he had thought possible, and in view of the character 
of the men who had been brought into the enterprise, 
he thought it would give them and the public greater 
satisfaction to have an older man and one better 
known than myself chosen for the presidency. To 
this I consented upon condition that the salary list 
should not be increased, and that the proposed presi- 
dent should receive half the salary of $3000 which had 
been promised to me." 

Mr. William C. Alexander was a son of the Rev. 
Archibald Alexander, D.D., of Princeton, and brother 
of the Rev. James W. Alexander, D.D. ; a man of 
mature years, of long experience at the bar and in the 
Senate of New Jersey, and possessed of those qualities 
which gave to the community a high degree of con- 
fidence. He was also a man of affairs. He admired 
the courage, ability, and genius of his young associate, 
and whenever, in after years, hostile competition pro- 
voked a storm of criticism, he stood as a bulwark 
of strength between the young manager and the 
business community. His selection to fill the im- 



32 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

portant position of president in the new company 
indicates Mr. Hyde's perspicacity ; for he reaUzed 
that the advent of the Equitable Society would stimu- 
late the business of life assurance, quicken competition, 
and provoke hostility; he knew that competitors would 
hurl jeers at the introduction of new methods, and 
that conservative business men would look askance 
at the Society, if it was to be directed by a man 
who as yet must plead guilty to the charge of youth. 
Mr. Alexander remained in office until his death. 

Looking backward after an experience of twenty 
years, Mr. Hyde said : ''It was a most fortunate thing 
that Mr. William C. Alexander was chosen the first 
president of the Society ; and although he never pre- 
tended to assume its active business management, 
still, by his great influence and extended acquaintance 
throughout the country, the interests of the Society 
were forwarded in various ways, to an extent which 
would not have been possible under any other circum- 
stances. I can truly say that those early days were 
the happiest of my assurance life. The burden and 
responsibility of conducting the business were compara- 
tively light, and my relations and intercourse with the 
president are looked back upon by me with the great- 
est pleasure. During the early years of the Society, 
the president lived at the Washington Hotel, No. i 
Broadway. I was at the Society's office nearly every 
night, and the comfort and assistance given by the 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 33 

president to one who was, to a great extent, charged 
with the business responsibiUty of the Society, were very 
cheering. I can recollect many delightful hours which 
we spent together at the fireside after the business 
of the day was over, when I listened to his views 
of the situation, which were always of a cheerful char- 
acter. I know of but two persons who united with me 
at this time in the belief that our enterprise would cer- 
tainly be a permanent success. My father, Mr. Henry 
H. Hyde, was enthusiastic from the beginning, being 
the one most familiar with my project ; but his confi- 
dence was due in part to parental affection, and was 
not wholly founded upon impartial judgment. The 
other, who never faltered for an instant, and over 
whose mind no shadow ever rested, was the first 
president of the Society, who, captivated in the begin- 
ning by the brilliancy of our aims, was unshaken in the 
belief that our fondest hopes would in the end be 
realized. My great incentive at that time, which influ- 
enced me to work day and night, was to sustain their 
opinion and justify them in their belief." 



CHAPTER IV 

THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS 

From the very inception of the Society, Mr. Hyde 
determined that its business should be managed with 
rigid economy. The rent of the office was $900 ; the 
salaries of the officers were small, as the following list 
shows : 

William C. Alexander, President $1,500 

Henry B. Hyde, Vice-President and Manager . . . 1,500 

George W. Phillips, Actuary 1,200 

Edward P. Williams, Secretary 1,200 

Dr. Edward W. Lambert, Examining Physician, was to be 
paid fees for examinations made, not to exceed $1000 
during the first year. 
Willard Parker, Consulting Physician, Daniel Lord, Counsel, 
' ' and Henry Day, Attorney, were to be paid for ser- 
vices rendered. 

Mr. Hyde succeeded in obtaining from the Board 
of Directors a vast amount of work which they per- 
formed gratuitously. In after years he pointed with 
pride to the fact that '' Mr. Henry G. Marquand ex- 
amined the real estate, on which we made loans to the 

34 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 35 

extent of half a million of dollars, for which services he 
received no remuneration," and that ''we had no cleri- 
cal force at the start, the actuary attending to all the 
necessary duties of the office, keeping the books and 
answering correspondence. One office boy, at $1.50 a 
week, and an outside copyist were our only assistants." 

But there were other expenses, which the prudent 
manager bore himself, because the infant society 
could not carry all the burden. Many years after, 
he said : " Extraordinary expenses of various kinds 
were paid by me individually, both before and after 
the organization of the Society. There was no au- 
thority from the Board for these expenditures, but 
they were none the less essential to the successful 
organization of the Society and the efficient prosecu- 
tion of our business. They would not have been 
justified if our enterprise had failed; consequently, in 
advancing these sums, I assumed a personal risk. I 
was not reimbursed until the Board, at the suggestion 
of a special committee, directed the sum of $5000 to 
be placed to my credit on the books of the Society as 
compensation, in addition to the salary paid me pre- 
viously at the rate of $1500 a year. This was three 
and a half years after the Society had been organized." 

It was not until August, i860, that the first clerk, 
James B. Loring, now registrar of the Society, was 
employed. The second clerk, Thomas D. Jordan, now 
controller, was not engaged until the beginning of the 



2,6 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

year 1861. To-day there are more than five hundred 
persons who attend at the office of the Society for reg- 
ular duty. This number does not include the agents or 
their clerks, nor the engineers, watchmen, and janitors 
in charge of the Equitable Building. 

If the work of securing representative men for in- 
corporators, directors, and committees, providing a 
charter, by-laws, and necessary documents, is con- 
sidered sufficient work for one man, it was not enough 
for Mr. Hyde. In addition to all this he sought agents 
for the Society and personally solicited business for it. 
Its charter was obtained July 26, 1859, and its doors 
were opened for business on the 28th of the same 
month. But opening a door is one thing ; to have 
somebody enter is quite another. To provide for this 
emergency, Mr. Hyde had, on the ist of June, sent 
out the following letter to prominent men in the 
community : 

Allow me to ask your friendly cooperation in an enterprise in the 
success of which I am deeply interested. 

I have the honor to be associated with a number of the most 
respectable and responsible merchants of this and other cities, who 
aim to estabhsh "The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the 
United States." 

The preliminaries of organization are nearly perfected, and it is 
proposed to commence business on or about the first day of July next. 

It is deemed important that the company should enter upon its 
career with a reasonable amount of business secured to it, and I have 
assumed heavy responsibilities in this direction, to meet which I am 
compelled to solicit sympathy and assistance from my friends in this 
and other cities. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ^^1 

Organized upon principles purely mutual, and managed by gentle- 
men whose names must command the public confidence, the new 
company will present unrivaled inducements to insurers, and its poli- 
cies will possess all the desirable features of this favorite method of 
accumulating a certain provision for those who may otherwise be left 
without help or helpers. 

I ask you, therefore, as a personal friend, to authorize the issue of 
a policy upon your life for such an amount as your judgment may 
approve ; or, in case of your being already insured for the desired 
amount, that you will interest yourself in obtaining one or more appli- 
cations for insurance upon the annexed paper, and return to me in 
the inclosed envelope by the 20th of June. 

By prompt action in this regard you will place me under obliga- 
tions which I shall not be slow to acknowledge, and which my 
official position in the company will enable me fully to discharge. 



But not satisfied with this appeal to the general public, 
he turned his plea to the incorporators and directors 
of the Society. Speaking of this, he says: ''At the 
very commencement I stated to the directors that 
it was important, above all things, that the members 
of the Board should be assured. Many objected, on 
the ground that they did not consider this essential, 
but I explained that if they showed any doubt re- 
garding the Society it would influence outsiders 
unfavorably ; and this truth became so apparent to 
them that the greater number assured their lives in 
the Society simply to show their confidence in it. 
Through the cordial cooperation of the directors in 
thus assuring their own lives and introducing their 
personal friends, our business was successfully inaugu- 
rated. The first policies issued, numbered i and 2, 



38 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



were on the life of my father. We secured $433,000 
of assurance prior to the organization of the Society. 
A large part of this I obtained myself in New York 
city, free of commissions ; most of the balance was ob- 
tained by my father. Upon that portion a commission 
on the first year's premiums of only ten per cent, was 
paid. During the first year my father wrote an ag- 
gregate of assurance of nearly $500,000 (chiefly in 
Boston), upon which the first year's commission was 
only ten per cent." 

On July 28, 1859, the day on which the Society*s 
doors were opened, fourteen policies, covering risks to 
the amount of $100,500, were written. It is interesting 
to note the history of this group of policies. On the 
Society's fortieth anniversary one policy was still in 
force, one had been abandoned, four had been pur- 
chased by the Society, and eight had matured as death 
claims. 

On December i, 1859, the Society moved into larger 
offices, in a new building, at No. 92 Broadway, and on 
December 3 1 its financial exhibit was as follows : 



Assurance in force . 


$1,144,000.00 


Assets .... 


117,102.39 


Income .... 


• 22,706.94 


Expenses 


9,707.97 


Death claims . . . , 


None 



The conservative management which characterized 
the early administration of the Society's affairs is illus- 




THE SOCIETY S SECOND OFFICE 
No. 92 Broadway 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 39 

trated by a statement embodied in the president's re- 
port at the first annual meeting of the directors, held 
in January, i860. It referred to the lease of the 
new premises at a rental of $2500 a year, and to 
the new furniture for the officers, directors, agents, 
and clerks. The following is an extract from the 
report : 

*' A committee was appointed at the last meeting of the 
Board to provide for the furnishing of the new offices. 
The season of the year, causing the absence of some 
members of the committee and the engagement of 
others, rendered it impossible to provide frequent 
meetings of the committee, and as the case required 
prompt action, the alternative being the occupation of 
unfurnished rooms, the president and vice-president, 
with the concurrence of a majority of the committee, 
assumed the duty and responsibility of selecting and 
contracting for the necessary furniture. The manner 
in which this duty has been performed will, it is hoped, 
meet the approbation of the Board. The strictest econ- 
omy has been consulted so far as was consistent with a 
due regard to elegance, comfort, and convenience. 
The contractor agreed to furnish the counter, desks 
for president, vice-president, and secretary, actuary's 
large and small desks, physician's desk, desk for boy, 
and two desks for agents, table for directors' room, 
and desks and benches for the hall, for the sum of 
$980. This sum has been increased by the amount of 



40 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



$70 for an additional partition, not included in the 
original contract. The work, so far as it has been 
completed, has been thoroughly satisfactory and faith- 
fully done, and it is believed that the terms on which 
it has been performed are more liberal than can be ob- 
tained from any other person. The furniture used in 
the office formerly occupied by the Society has been 
disposed of with a moderate reduction from the original 
cost, as compensation for its use and wear. The car- 
pets for the front office, the directors' room, and that 
of the physician, were procured of the best quality, at 
an expense of $234.97, while smaller amounts have 
been expended for chairs, gas fixtures, shades, and 
other necessary articles. These items of expense oc 
curring only at the commencement of the operations of 
the Society, or at long intervals afterward, it was con- 
sidered wise to procure everything of the best and 
most durable quality." 

A glimpse of the daily work in the office of the 
Equitable Society in i860 is briefly given by Mr. 
James B. Loring, who was the first clerk. He says : 
*'The president opened the letters and passed upon 
the applications, handing them to Dr. Lambert for his 
approval. Mr. Hyde prepared the canvassing docu- 
ments, attended to all correspondence, established the 
agencies, made all contracts for advertising, and kept 
things stirring generally — and they stirred. Mr. Phil- 
lips kept the books. The secretary did but little office 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 41 

work ; most of his time was spent in obtaining risks. 
When there was much printed matter to be posted, 
Mr. Hyde would sometimes stay down at night with 
me and take a hand in addressing the envelopes. In 
a few months after I became identified with the So- 
ciety, the business increased so rapidly that Mr. Hyde 
was obliged to drop the correspondence, giving it to 
Mr. Phillips, who passed the books over to me." 



CHAPTER V 



EARLY TRIUMPHS 



From the day on which Mr. Hyde hung up the sign 
inscribed "The Equitable Life Assurance Society of 
the United States," he began to put into his plans 
all the energy, vigor, and force that he possessed. " In 
these early years," he said, "our path was beset by 
enemies; no expedients were left untried by them to 
work our ruin. The most violent detractions of the 
Society and of my own character, both official and 
private, were published and circulated. But we were 
most loyally supported by our friends and directors; 
those who were interested and those who were disin- 
terested wished us God- speed ; but, after all, our fail- 
ure would have startled few, and moderate prosperity 
was more than the majority expected." 

This reference to hostile criticism is easily understood 
when the fierce competition of those days is borne in 
mind. " He crossed swords," writes Mr. John R. 
Hegeman,^ "with twenty companies then in existence, 

^ President of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. 

42 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 43 

and fought the fight later on against seventy competi- 
tors. He was a just antagonist, asking no odds be- 
yond * fair play.' I never heard from him a mean 
word about a rival. In his onslaughts — and they were 
mighty when he was aroused — he was n't satisfied to 
get up early in the morning for preparation; he always 
got up the day before. When most men were con- 
sidering when to begin, he had it done. His feet were 
always in the stirrups." 

The Equitable Society, from the outset, attracted 
notice from the business community, to which it 
strongly appealed, and challenged attention from the 
existing life assurance companies, whose managers 
saw in the new-comer the probable development of 
a formidable competitor for business. Its modest 
offices, small number of officers and clerks at low 
salaries, its commanding list of directors, the energy 
and enthusiasm of its manager, and the declaration, 
as embodied in its charter, that ''the insurance busi- 
ness of the company shall be conducted on the mutual 
plan'' presented to the public an unanswerable argu- 
ment in behalf of patronage. The policy-holders 
felt that they had become members of an association 
whose chief aims were to be of mutual benefit to one 
another, and to extend the beneficent influence of life 
assurance throughout the length and breadth of the land. 

In the beginning Mr. Hyde followed the established 
lines of action confirmed by the experience of other 



44 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



companies, hazarding nothing of a merely experi- 
mental character. But he was not a man to follow 
always in the track of others. His first aim was to 
make a firm foundation ; his second, to make constant 
progress. He took no step without the most careful 
thought. Speaking of this, Mr. Hegeman says : 
** These things come not of themselves. They are 
wrought out patiently and painfully. They are the prod- 
ucts of deep thought and heroic action. Mr. Hyde 
always did his own thinking. He would seek advice, 
and he always followed what a friend gave him — pro- 
vided he agreed with the friend ! But, his course 
marked out, he hewed to the line ; he never faltered, 
he never feared. I rarely knew a man with more sub- 
lime faith in himself He believed that convictions 
were given to men to abide by. All his studying and 
counseling and weighing and doubting were done 
beforehand ; then the purpose once formed went on 
to fruition." 

Scarcely had the Equitable Society published its 
first financial statement, December 31, 1859, when 
the portentous rumblings which culminated in a Civil 
War began to disturb all financial centers. In the face 
of the threatening storm the young manager persisted 
on his way, enlisting in the service of the Society 
two hundred and twenty-nine agents, of which one 
hundred and eighty-four were located in various States, 
and forty-five in the State of New York. When the 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 45 

year closed, $2,641,500 of assurance stood in force 
upon the Society's books. In 1861 the poHtical 
excitement became more and more intense. Six 
States followed quickly the secession of South Caro- 
lina in December, i860; fivG others seceding in 
January, and one in February. Fort Sumter was 
bombarded in April. The proclamation of Abraham 
Lincoln calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers 
was answered by the secession of the great border 
States of the South. It was not possible for the busi- 
ness of life assurance to make great headway under 
such conditions. Some of the companies actually lost 
ground. Nevertheless, the Society reported an increase 
of assurance in 1861 of over a million dollars. 

The first five years of any commercial industry are 
sufficiently laden with perils and perplexities, without 
having added thereto all those disturbing elements 
which follow in the path of a great political convulsion. 
Yet the Equitable Society passed the tender years 
of its infancy in the very shadow of the Civil War, 
gaining with each year additional strength, so that, 
when peace was established, it indicated its prog- 
ress by the fact that it had in force upward of 
twenty-seven and a half million dollars of assurance,^ 
a large accumulation of assets, and a substantial sur- 
plus. It was during this period of national distress 
and universal depression that the indomitable courage 

lOn December 31, 1865. 



46 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

of the Equitable Society's vice-president and manager 
shone in the ardor of his tireless efforts and sanguine 
enthusiasm. 

A story is told illustrative of Mr. Hyde's invincible 
determination to surmount difficulties. Many years 
ago, when the life companies were fiercely competing 
for business, all the clerks, headed by the officers, 
were engaged at midnight folding circulars, filling, 
sealing, addressing, and stamping envelopes. Mr. 
Hyde attached great importance to mailing the cir- 
culars before morning. He was determined to address 
the public before his competitors. At one o'clock the 
supply of postage-stamps was exhausted, and the clerk 
stated that it would be impossible to procure more. 
*' Impossible?" cried Mr. Hyde, "impossible?" When 
the superintendent, at the other end of the hall, knew 
by the tones of Mr. Hyde's voice that the unexpected 
had happened, he approached his chief, who exclaimed: 
"We are out of stamps. Take a carriage, find the 
postmaster, and tell him we must have stamps." He 
went to the postmaster's house and interviewed that 
astonished official, who directed him to the residence 
of the stamp clerk. This functionary was routed from 
his bed, persuaded to go to the post-ofiice, open his 
safe, and deliver the stamps. The circulars were 
mailed before daybreak. 



CHAPTER VI 

MANIFESTATIONS OF WISDOM AND ENERGY 

It needs no mind of rare imaginative power to pic- 
ture the busy office of the Equitable Society, where the 
vice-president was willing to **stay down at night" 
to ''take a hand in addressing the envelopes" because 
during the day he had been busy " establishing agen- 
cies" and keeping ''things stirring." The effect of 
this energy on his associates is well described by 
William Harlan Page, one of the oldest of the Society's 
agents now living. He says : " We were working in 
three small rooms for offices. Mr. Hyde impressed 
me as a man of most marvelous versatility ; of wonder- 
ful intuition, knowledge of men, genius in winning 
men and handling them, and a happy faculty of keep- 
ing us in a state of splendid esprit de corps, and our 
enthusiasm and good feeling always at the highest 
pitch. He had a noble purpose, to lay broad founda- 
tions for future success. I well remember that when 
he rented two or three rooms in the adjoining building 
some of us thought he was broadening out ahead of 

47 



48 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

the business, but his far-sightedness was beyond us all. 
He saw clearly how to move and execute, when others 
only had a glimpse. We could not help but follow in 
his lead to the great success we have since attained." 

No detail, however small, escaped Mr. Hyde. His 
consideration of every point as it came up familiarized 
him with that branch of the business to which it 
belonged ; and the requirements and possibilities of 
each and every branch soon worked themselves out 
in his vigorous and logical mind. And thus it may 
be truly said that he became, in his own office, self- 
educated in the science and business of life assurance. 

He possessed a rugged constitution and was en- 
dowed with great physical strength. In energy few 
men have ever approached him. During the early years 
he thought nothing of taking a tour of the United 
States, working all day long and every day, and travel- 
ing every night. Mr. William Alexander, the present 
secretary of the Society, in speaking of this, says : ** I 
have never seen a man who could work as fast or as 
hard as he. I have never seen a man who could do 
as much in a given time. Not only could he accom- 
plish more himself, but he could get more work out 
of a greater number of other people at one and the 
same time than any man I have ever known. He 
could keep any number of men busy from morning 
till night, and if need be all night long, not only those 
directly under his eye, but those also at a distance. 




AT THIRTY YEARS OF AGE 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 49 

He had a sort of omnipresence, and what seemed 
almost Hke a hypnotic influence, which kept his as- 
sociates and assistants at concert pitch as long as 
they were responsible for work in which he was inter- 
ested, whether he was present or whether he was 
absent. His hand moved with great rapidity, and 
his thought flashed to the very center of a subject 
with astonishing swiftness. Often when some vast 
roll of papers, covering in detail the particulars of 
an important and complicated piece of business, was 
brought to him to study, he seemed able, by a sort of 
intuition, after glancing at a word here and there, 
instantly to become master of the subject in hand. 
To cope with him in an argument or a dispute, a man 
had to think quickly. His mind worked quickly and 
with a sure instinct. He possessed confidence born 
of familiarity with his subject, a familiarity resulting 
from long and careful preliminary study of the ques- 
tion. He had looked at it from every side. He had 
thought of its every possible phase, and was pre- 
pared for every turn and ready for every surprise. 
It was his habit to concentrate his thoughts for long 
periods on single problems before he began to deal 
with them. Nothing was too small or too unim- 
portant if it related in any way to any transaction 
of moment. Once his mind was made up, he was 
fearless, confident, and aggressive. He pretended to 
have great contempt for * genius,' and always con- 



50 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



tended that the only men of genius were those who 
had the capacity to do hard work, and who kept 
everlastingly at it. Nevertheless, he knew in his 
heart of hearts that he himself was blessed with 
genius, but in his dealings with other men he never 
wasted his strength on what he regarded as unneces- 
sary labor, and knowing full well that if a man had 
genius it would crop out, he gave genius the go-by ; 
but knowing equally well that a man's diligence might 
be greatly stimulated by precept and example, he 
preached the gospel of work day in and day out. He 
was absolutely devoid of all false pride, never stopping 
to consider whether a piece of work might be regarded 
as beneath the dignity of the president of a great life 
assurance company or not. If he felt that by under- 
taking it himself, instead of delegating it to a sub- 
ordinate, the Society would be the gainer, he would 
undertake it. But no one could reflect upon the dig- 
nity of the Equitable Society in his presence with 
impunity. If its fair fame were assailed, his righteous 
indignation was instantly aroused, and when his indig- 
nation was aroused his action was swift and decisive." 
" I attribute a great deal of what business capacity I 
have," says President James W. Alexander, ''to the 
example and counsels of Mr. Hyde through many 
years. Very early in my official career he urged upon 
me the principle that I should never do myself what I 
could get some other man to do as well. The object 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 51 

of this was to economize time for matters of the great- 
est importance. That thought has been useful to me 
all my life, and it is one of the elements of executive 
ability. A favorite motto of his in advising with me 
about accomplishing ends was, ' A step each day.' In 
the conduct of large affairs, with embarrassing and 
complicated questions constantly arising, the tempta- 
tion frequently presents itself to postpone and defer. 
Mr. Hyde's promptitude was one of his best points. 
When important things were to be done, he did them 
like lightning, and exacted the same sort of readiness 
on the part of his assistants. Any man who will adopt 
this principle and put it into practice will accomplish 
many times the work of one who does n't bear it in 
mind. 

''The remarkable system by which the officers of 
the Equitable Society keep daily check on every de- 
partment of its affairs, and know precisely what is 
going on, by means of statistical reports from the va- 
rious departments, was invented by Mr. Hyde and put 
into operation by him, and it is now of the greatest 
possible value and requires little amendment. Who- 
ever is at the head of the Equitable Society is able, by 
means of this machinery, every day, to know exactly 
how faithfully each man in the office and in the field is 
performing his duties, and how the results in all depart- 
ments stand, and thereby to criticize, change, develop, 
and otherwise handle the details of the business so as 



52 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

to correct faults and make improvements, and all this 
with very slight expenditure of time or trouble." 

Mr. Gage E. Tarbell, second vice-president of the 
Society, throws an interesting side-light on this 
subject, which shows that Mr. Hyde's motives were 
complex, and that he often killed two birds with one 
stone. He says: ''Many of Mr. Hyde's methods 
were unique, and frequently not fully understood even 
by those who were close to him. I never shall forget 
how much I was impressed at a discovery I made soon 
after I became an officer of the Equitable Society. 
Mr. Hyde had been absent from the office for some 
time. Immediately on his return, he sent for his prin- 
cipal lieutenants and asked them to furnish, at the 
earliest possible moment, minute and detailed state- 
ments regarding the business under their care. I 
knew that there was no occasion for Mr. Hyde's 
requiring much of the information he had asked for; 
and by watching the situation carefully I learned that 
his object was chiefly for the purpose of having the men 
in charge of the particular departments thoroughly 
understand their condition. He followed this custom 
at frequent intervals all through his life, and I regard 
it as one of the shrewdest things he was in the habit 
of doing in connection with the management of the 
Society, for it kept every one of his responsible lieuten- 
ants thoroughly advised about his own work." 



CHAPTER VII 

THE QUINQUENNIAL DIVIDEND 

In January, 1865, the Society paid its first dividend 
to policy-holders. A large proportion of the surplus, 
$515,811, which had been accumulated up to the close 
of the year 1864, was thus distributed. ''I may 
say truly," said Mr. Hyde, in reviewing this period 
of the Society's history, '' that we divided among our 
policy-holders nearly all the surplus which had been 
accumulated during the previous five years. We thus 
drained our coffers, and I need not tell you that the 
actual surplus remaining was not very large. Up to 
this time the Mutual Life Insurance Company had 
adhered strictly to custom, and had declared dividends 
to policy-holders only at intervals of five years. But 
immediately after our first dividend had been declared, 
the Mutual Life suddenly announced that in 1866 that 
company would begin to pay dividends annually. The 
moment the first annual dividend of the Mutual Life 
Insurance Company was actually declared, I announced 
in the papers that the Equitable Life Assurance So- 

53 



54 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

ciety would pay annual dividends on its policies, and 
our first annual dividend was declared February i, 
1867." 

While the Equitable Life Assurance Society had 
been forging ahead of its competitors, other matters 
of interest had been occurring. The rapidly increas- 
ing business had necessitated the extension of its 
office accommodations, the enlargement of its clerical 
force, and changes in its staff of officers. The four 
small rooms at No. 92 Broadway were soon found in- 
adequate, and additional space was obtained by leasing 
floors in Nos. 94 and 96 Broadway. These rooms were 
connected by a passage made through the walls. It 
is said that, having leased the premises, Mr. Hyde 
connected the buildings with doors, and then asked the 
seemingly unnecessary permission to do so.^ But the 

1 " I remember many things that ferent landlords, and one of them 
Mr. Hyde did in the early years of was of such a temperament that 
the Society, which illustrated his Mr. Hyde had some misgivings as 
hard business sense and determina- to whether he could obtain consent 
tion. When he saw a thing had to make an opening in the wall 
to be done, he generally made up between the two structures. He 
his mind to do it, no matter what cut the Gordian knot by bringing 
the obstacles. An instance, of no in masons and making the open- 
great importance in itself, will illus- ing first, and then negotiating after- 
trate what I mean : ward. Of course, technically and 

" The Equitable formerly had its legally, the act was a trespass, but 

offices at No. 92 Broadway. As its the entrance once made, Mr. Hyde 

business increased, it became neces- found it quite easy to obtain the 

sary to take offices in the building legal consent, which was given."— 

next door; and it was desirable to From a speech by Mr. James W. 

connect these two buildings by an Alexander at an agents' luncheon 

opening. But there were two dif- in 1896. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 55 

new accommodations soon proved to be too small for 
the business, and on December 16, 1865, the records 
show that at a special meeting of the Board three 
directors, Messrs. Hurlbut, Lambert, and Marquand, 
were appointed a special committee to consider the 
question of erecting a building for the use of the 
Society. The committee recommended the purchase 
of a site and the erection of a building. One cannot 
escape the joyous and triumphant note sounded in 
Mr. Hyde's comment upon this action. He says : 
**That, with assets at this time of a milHon and a 
half, and an income of $971,000, the Board should 
have taken the responsibility of recommending the 
erection of a large building, shows their faith at that 
time in the future progress and growth of the Society ; 
but the step was a wise one, for we were rapidly out- 
growing the accommodations at our command, and 
on two occasions our office had barely escaped de- 
struction by fire; and, indeed, some of our valuable 
books, papers, and documents were injured, and some 
were lost." It is safe to assume that the committee 
would never have taken the responsibility of recom- 
mending the erection of a building had they not 
possessed unbounded confidence in Mr. Hyde. Their 
faith in the future was their faith in him. But it was 
not until September 16, 1867, that the purchase of 
all the land for the original Equitable Building was 
consummated. 



56 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

At that time the office of secretary was vacant, and 
Mr. George W. PhilHps, the actuary, was also doing 
the work of a secretary. But as the business of each 
department increased, it was found necessary to ap- 
point a permanent secretary. The choice fell upon 
Mr. James W. Alexander (son of the Rev. James W. 
Alexander, D.D., and nephew of the first president), 
who abandoned the practice of law August 13, 1866, 
to become the secretary of the Society. He had been 
no stranger to its affairs. His connection, as it were, 
began during the summer of 1859. " Before I became 
a senior at college," said he, ''I heard a great deal 
about the preliminary work of establishing the Equita- 
ble Society. Owing to my intimacy with Mr. Hyde 
and the fact that my uncle, Mr. William C. Alexander, 
was chosen to be the first president of the company, I 
kept very closely in touch with Mr. Hyde and his work. 
After graduation from college in i860, I studied law in 
New York, became a practitioner, and continued active 
in the profession until I was elected secretary of the 
Equitable. I mention this fact merely as showing 
when my organic connection with the company began, 
and to explain that during the interval from July, 
1859, until August, 1866, my intercourse with Mr. 
Hyde was that of a friend, and not of an associate 
officer. I saw a great deal of him, and a friendship 
was formed which continued unbroken, constantly in- 
creasing in firmness until Mr. Hyde's death. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 57 

'* Nothing can obliterate the impression made upon 
me as a young man, after joining the Equitable, of 
the tremendous vigor and industry of Mr. Hyde. 
His mind was perhaps the most active which I have 
ever observed. I remember often having heard the 
first president of the company say that Mr. Hyde 
had a more suggestive mind than anybody he had 
ever met. He always took great pains to be sure he 
was right in a certain course, and then it seemed as 
if nothing could stand in his way. Neither friend- 
ships, nor obstacles, nor precedents, nor anything else, 
kept him from accomplishing his purpose. Naturally 
a man like this sometimes trod on other people's toes, 
but it was always with him the Equitable first, and 
personal friendships afterwards. He had a feeling 
about it very much as if it was a sentient being, 
and was ready to tnake any sacrifice in its behalf. 
Instead of being, as many people imagine all cor- 
porate officers to be, one who was disposed to use 
the institution for his own benefit, there have been 
many instances which have come under my personal 
observation when Mr. Hyde has risked his entire 
fortune for the benefit of the concern which occu- 
pied so large a place in his heart, and I am quite sure 
that I do not exaggerate when I say that I believe 
that he would have submitted to impoverishment 
rather than to see disaster come to the Equitable 
Society." 



CHAPTER VIII 

ONE OF THE MANY REFORMS THAT ORIGINATED 
WITH MR. HYDE 

At the close of its sixth year the business of the Equita- 
ble Life Assurance Society had outrun that of all com- 
peting companies, excepting six of the older ones. The 
Society, having made advances greater than ever 
before, was able to report to the New York Insurance 
Department on December 31, 1865, $27,507,739 of 
assurance in force. But a new danger now appeared. 
It came in the form of Asiatic cholera, which spread as 
far West as Missouri. Its approach had been viewed 
with apprehension by the managers of all life assurance 
companies. Mr. Hyde refers to it as his " first serious 
anxiety." He says : *' The cholera, of which we had 
heard rumblings along the horizon for a considerable 
period, began to show itself in our midst. Mr. Phillips, 
the actuary, very prudently assured me that a vital 
error had been committed in agreeing to pay divi- 
dends annually to policy-holders. He went so far as 
to advise a retraction of our dividend announcement 

58 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 59 

After a careful review of the situation, I came to the 
conclusion that the danger of retreat was greater than 
that of advance, and that, once having put my hand to 
the plow, I would not turn back. I passed a summer 
of the greatest anxiety, but, contrary to our fears, the 
mortality among our policy-holders was exceedingly 
light, falling considerably below our expectation." Ex- 
perience has since proved that a life assurance com- 
pany with a large and widely distributed business has 
little to fear from epidemics, partly because the mor- 
tality does not fall heavily upon those whose intelli- 
gence and prudence prompt them to assure their lives, 
and partly because those who assure for large amounts 
are men of means, who are usually able to avoid con- 
tagion by moving temporarily from infected regions. 

Probably it was during this period of anxiety that 
Mr. Hyde came to the conclusion which he afterwards 
expressed in these words: ''Surplus is strength." 
During his whole life he adhered to this maxim, build- 
ing the business of the Society upon the basic principle 
of husbanding its income sufficiently to enable it to 
defy epidemics, political convulsions, and economic 
disturbances. The problem which now confronted 
Mr. Hyde, he met, as Mr. Hegeman says, by '' study- 
ing and counseling and weighing and doubting." 
The result was the announcement made on December 
31, 1868, that a new form of policy would be issued by 
the Society. 



6o ' HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

At that time the Equitable's outstanding assur- 
ance exceeded $100,000,000, and its assets amounted 
to $7,721,077. It was therefore in a position to 
inaugurate successfully one of the greatest reforms 
ever conceived or introduced by any life assurance 
company. 

Under its terms it was agreed with holders of 
this new policy that, in consideration of certain special 
advantages to those who maintained their policies in 
force for a stipulated period, all dividends should be 
deferred until the completion of that period. These 
special advantages were in the main twofold: first, 
that a full share of the surplus profits accumulated 
was to be apportioned by the actuaries of the Society 
among those who maintained their policies; and, 
second, that the maintaining policy-holders desiring 
to withdraw from the company were to be given the 
entire reserve on their policies in cash. 

Up to that time no company had ever dreamed of 
giving a man during his own lifetime, upon the surrender 
of a ''life policy," the entire reserve and a full share of 
the accumulated surplus. This, the first practical revo- 
lution in life assurance inaugurated by the Equitable 
Society, is thus spoken of by Mr. Hyde: *' As soon as 
we had developed our plan we submitted it to the Hon. 
William Barnes, who was then Superintendent of the 
Insurance Department of the State of New York, a 
recognized authority on all actuarial questions. The 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 6i 

following are extracts from a letter addressed by him, 
on February 2, 1869, to the Society: 

*' ' The scheme seems to be so natural and applicable 
to certain classes of policy-holders that, like many 
important discoveries in science and art, the wonder is 
how it could have so long remained dormant and 
undiscovered. . . . Your plan, as developed in the 
pamphlet, with perhaps some slight modifications, con- 
tains within itself the elements for the most successful 
application of the principle of any yet elaborated on 
either side of the Atlantic. . . . Your new method 
of dividends will, I think, prove to be popular with our 
people, as, while preserving the great end of life assur- 
ance by securing a large amount in case of early death, 
it offers a release from the payment of premiums dur- 
ing the advanced ages when enterprise begins to flag 
and the resources and energies of youth and middle 
life begin to diminish. And if your hopes of turning 
an annuity payable by the policy-holder to the com- 
pany into one payable by the company to the policy- 
holder should be realized, you will then produce a 
pecuniary result the most acceptable possible to all 
members of the hurfian family, of whatever age or 
race.' " 

As the new policy appealed successfully to the public, 
the number of policies bearing annual dividends was 
greatly reduced. Its influence was far-reaching. The 
older companies adopted the principle after a time. 



62 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

First of these was the New York Life Insurance Com- 
pany, which had commenced business in 1845; next 
the Mutual Life Insurance Company, which had com- 
menced business in 1843, adopted it soon after the 
New York Life (although the principle was tempo- 
rarily abandoned) ; then came the Northwestern of 
Wisconsin, and ultimately many other companies. In- 
deed, so far-reaching was the effect of this beneficent 
reform that the Colonial Mutual in far-away Australia 
adopted it as its own. The policy has gone through 
many changes in subsequent years ; to-day, developed 
and liberalized as the Guaranteed Cash Value Policy 
of the Equitable Society, it is one of the most popular 
contracts ever issued by any life assurance company. 
It may be noted, in passing, that the companies 
that followed the example of the Equitable Society 
prospered as never before, while those that opposed 
it were left far behind. The great bulk of all the busi- 
ness of the regular life companies has now, for a quar- 
ter of a century, been transacted on plans resembling 
the system inaugurated by the Society in 1868. 

It is not to be assumed from the history given of 
this revolution in the practice of assurance that the 
innovation met with no opposition. Adverse criticisms 
sprang from the hostility that is engendered by fierce 
competition. An incident reveals this fact, and at the 
same time vividly portrays a characteristic of the man 
who created an innovation which was finally adopted 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 63 

by the competitor who scouted it. Mr. E. A. Spencer 
of Buffalo, an old representative of the Society, writes : 
*' Well do I remember when the first deferred-dividend 
policy of the Society was issued. A competing com- 
pany assailed this form of assurance through the press 
of the country ; and, not satisfied with this mode of 
warfare, caused to be printed a cartoon representing an 
open umbrella, the covering of which hung in shreds 
from its frame ; and underneath was written, ' The 
Equitable Life Assurance Company's Policy.' This 
was circulated and posted in great numbers in store- 
windows in the city of Buffalo. Upon seeing them, I 
procured a copy, and went at once to New York, and 
showed it to Mr. Hyde. He took the cartoon from 
my hand and said to me : ' Is this what is being circu- 
lated?' I said, 'Yes.' Then turning to me, he said: 
' Be seated, and I don't want you to leave this office until 
I return.' Never shall I forget the expression of that 
man's face when leaving the room ; and, upon his 
return in about thirty minutes, he said to me : ' Do you 
know when the first train leaves for Buffalo ? ' I told 
him I did not think there was one before evening. He 
said to me : ' I want you to take ^Aa^ train, and, upon 
reaching home, if you find that these cartoons have not 
been removed, telegraph to me at once. But,' said he, 
*I think you have seen the last of them.' The cartoon 
I handed to Mr. Hyde was the last one I ever saw." 



CHAPTER IX 

MR. HYDE'S INFLUENCE UPON AGENTS 

No work was more important for the welfare of the 
Equitable Society than that of securing able men 
to represent it throughout the country. How well 
Mr. Hyde succeeded is best told by those who knew 
him when he was busy ''establishing agencies," in 
building up an agency system unrivaled the world 
over. Men of force, men of character, men of posi- 
tion, he sought throughout the length and breadth of 
the land. And he sought not in vain. His theory 
was that the work of soliciting men to assure their 
lives should be the sole business of the agent who 
undertakes it; and that ''agents must not let grass 
grow under their feet ; they must make up their minds 
to do the bulk of their business during the first half 
of every year ; they must spring at it, and then they 
will feel happier later on." 

Mr. William H. Bridgman, who was one of the 
Society's earliest agents, says : " In the summer of 
1 86 1 Mr. Hyde visited Chicago. He called on those 

64 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 65 

engaged in the business of life assurance, among 
whom I was one. He made no suggestion to any 
agent that he should sever his connection with the 
company he was serving. His purpose seemed 
rather to make the Equitable well known in life 
assurance circles. He spoke of the standing of its 
directors, of his hope that the Society would become 
worthy of the name he had given it, and of his purpose 
to make it all that a company should be. He was 
remarkably handsome and agreeable, but there was 
nothing in his bright eye or agreeable manner to 
indicate the force or the varied talents with which I 
was to become familiar a few months later. There 
was something about him, however, that so awakened 
confidence in his ability that I soon wrote, asking him 
what inducements he was disposed to offer me to join 
the Equitable. His reply was characteristic : * Come 
to New York at once at my expense.' " 

Mr. Bridgman resigned his position in Chicago and 
came to New York to sell the policies of the new com- 
pany. He began by assuring his own life, and shortly 
after entered upon a successful career as a life assurance 
writer. He says : "It was not an easy task for a 
stranger, during the early months of the Civil War, to 
place the policies of a small company, with no surplus, 
in the hands of the people of New York ; and I am con- 
fident that I would have failed utterly had not Mr. Hyde 
helped me in the beginning. When he went with me 



66 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

to see any one, he used but few words. He simply 
filled in the blanks in the application, and his personal 
magnetism won the signature. There was an inde- 
scribable something about him, too winning to be 
resisted. Mr. Hyde was a many-sided man even then. 
He had the courage that feared no obstacle, the force 
to make continuous and rapid progress, the most lofty 
ambition, and the hot blood of youth, and all regulated 
by that prudence that never permitted him to depart 
from those sound mathematical principles that should 
be at the base, and at every stage of the building of an 
institution founded * not for a day, but for all time.' 
As he began early to revolutionize the business of life 
assurance, he soon found competition enough to test 
his strength. If it were fair, he met it heroically. If 
unfair, he fought it with relentless vigor until it was 
abandoned, or rendered harmless by exposure. He 
never met unfair competition on its own ground. I 
mean by this that he never departed from sound busi- 
ness principles because some competitor had done so. 
In early days he was not disposed to leave adverse 
criticism unnoticed ; but after a time he ceased to be 
disturbed by the vaporings of the small, narrow, theo- 
retical men who were making more effort to prevent 
the growth of the Equitable than to promote the 
growth of the companies with which they were con- 
nected. Great as were his force and courage, these 
were not greater than his will. He abhorred excuses 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 67 

for failure, feeling that there was no such thing as 
'cannot,' unless based on physical impossibility." 

Mr. Tarbell says : *' Probably nothing aided Mr. 
Hyde more in his successful career than his ability to 
secure and retain the services of bright men to help 
him, coupled with his peculiar genius for handling 
them so as to make them more and more valuable as 
lieutenants as time went on. His influence over men 
was remarkable, and hundreds were made better men 
by reason of the impression which he created in his 
conversations with them. I never shall forget the 
first time I ever met him — I think it was in January, 
1886. I had been for several years a plodding 
country agent, and never had thought I amounted to 
very much. I was visiting New York as the guest of 
my good friend Mr. R. B. True, the Society's general 
agent at Syracuse, in whose employment I was at that 
time. Mr. True had invited me to go to New York 
on account of the large December business I had just 
written. When he introduced me to Mr. Hyde, he 
told him of the business I had closed the month 
before, and I never shall forget what he said. He 
stepped up in front of me, looked me squarely in the 
face, and bringing his hands down forcibly upon my 
shoulders, said: 'Tarbell, you are a great man.' I 
never had even thought myself a great agent, but Mr. 
Hyde's remark had such an effect upon me that I was 
forever thereafter a much more capable and energetic 



68 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

agent than I had ever been before. I speak of this 
incident simply to illustrate the fact that Mr. Hyde, 
by a single word, earnestly spoken, could stimulate 
and influence a man's whole life. He inspired me 
with such confidence in him that I always felt that 
anything he asked me to do I could do. On one oc- 
casion he asked me if I would give him from the 
agency I was managing three millions and a half of 
business in a single month, an amount much larger 
than had ever been produced in the agency within a 
similar period. The very fact that he requested it 
made me feel that the amount could be written, and 
the desire to please him enabled me to send him from 
the agency under my control five millions of business 
during the month, although he had asked for only 
three and a half millions." 

Mr. J. S. Kendrick, one of the agents of the Society, 
says : " The thing that always impressed me niost about 
Mr. Hyde was his wonderful influence over men. Mr. 
James M. Brawner, who was one of the Society's 
earliest representatives in the West, had an admira- 
tion and affection for him which impressed me as 
something wonderful. Mr. Hyde wrote many auto- 
graph letters to him, and seemed able to stir him to 
activity when nothing else could. Brawner was a man 
of moods and would not work at all for weeks at a time. 
During one of his spells of inactivity, when his business 
was running behind, he received a telegram reading: 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 69 

'Is your name Brawner? H. B. Hyde.' The effect 
was electrical. Within the next thirty days he wrote 
$333,500 in business. At that time, when the limit 
was $50,000, and $10,000 was considered a large policy, 
this was a great work. 

" Mr. Hyde was able to make agents work in the 
face of every obstacle. He seemed to enjoy hot com- 
petition, and his influence over his agents was so strong 
that the very fact that the Equitable Society was being 
attacked by some other company or companies made 
him work all the harder, and he always came out on top 
in the struggle. The boldness with which Mr. Hyde 
did things seemed to inspire his agents with the belief 
that nothing was impossible." 

One of the chief causes of Mr. Hyde's remarkable 
success with agents was not only that he impressed 
others with the strength of his own personality, but 
he inspired them with absolute confidence in the 
Society, in the value of its policies, in the soundness 
of its management, and in the justice of its treatment 
of all persons connected with it. When a prominent 
agent of the Society desired certain changes to be 
made in methods of business, and, in reply to a letter 
of disapproval, persisted in urging the changes, Mr. 
Hyde ended a letter, reviewing the whole subject, with 
these words : "I am very sorry to set my judgment 
against yours in this matter ; but in conducting the 
affairs of so large a company, I must endeavor to be 



70 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



just in all my decisions. Nothing would give me 
greater pleasure than to have you so in unison with 
my views respecting the business that a difference of 
opinion would be impossible." He never requested 
others to do what he himself recognized to be impos- 
sible. If it was difficult for agents to secure business 
for the youngest of all the companies, he was ever ready 
to demonstrate that it was not impossible to do so. 

Mr. Hyde proved himself to be the leader of the 
Equitable forces in the field. "He often went out 
canvassing to aid us in closing risks," says Mr. Page; 
"I remember, one day in 1865, taking him down the 
street to clinch a man whose main argument to me was 
that he did not believe in Mr. Hyde. Together we soon 
convinced him that he had better not disbelieve, and 
closed him then and there for a good-sized policy." 

Mr. Hyde's personal interest in the Society is illus- 
trated by an incident related by Byron A. Beal, 
another veteran agent, who called upon him with a 
certain banker. "I wished him to take our limit," 
says Mr. Beal. " I arranged to have him call and be 
introduced to Mr. Hyde. Among other things, the 
banker said: 'Don't you think, Mr. Hyde, I am taking 
too much risk in carrying so large an amount in one 
company ? ' He replied : ' Why, sir, you do not run 
a millionth part of the risk that I run. Should 
anything happen to the Equitable Society, that would 
be the end of me.' " 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 71 

Not only did Mr. Hyde prove the selling qualities 
of the Equitable policies while accompanying agents, 
but he fostered among them a healthy competition. 
''Away back in the sixties," says Mr. W. P. Halsted 
(at that time an agent, now collector of the Society), 
" coming in out of the cold one winter day down at 
the old office, at No. 92 Broadway, he met me at the 
door, and, slapping me on the shoulder, said : ' Now, 
here is a chance for you to win a prize — a silver 
pitcher and salver. We're going to put up two 
prizes, and you can certainly win one if you'll roll up 
your sleeves and pitch in.' The magnetism of the man 
made me feel that the prize was mine already, but I 
replied : ' Mr. Hyde, I don't want a pitcher. I have 
an old silver watch here, and I need a good time- 
piece, that I may fill my engagements to the minute 
with the men I'm after.' Quick as lightning he slapped 
me again on the shoulder, and said : ' We'll make the 
prizes two first-class watches.' I was so encouraged 
by his words that I pitched in and won one of those 
watches — a fine imported Swiss watch, which still 
serves me faithfully. Mr. James M. Brawner of St. 
Louis won the other watch." 

It was not by spurring men on to greater achieve- 
ments, by fanning their ambition in friendly contests, or 
by appealing to them with magnetic speeches that Mr. 
Hyde won his strongest hold over his corps of agents. 
It was by showing them that he was a man who ap- 



72 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



preciated honest efforts. Although aggressive and 
forceful himself, he knew all men were not so. Writ- 
ing to an agent who had been entrusted with a peculiar 
and important work, Mr. Hyde said : '* I know that 
great things are expected from me because I am, at 
times, a kind of brag, and sometimes feel that I must 
work very hard to keep up my reputation. In the 
same way you, in order to keep the championship, 
must occasionally fight for it. Now the conflict comes. 
The challenge has been thrown down. Will you 
rise to the emergency ? " 

Mr. James G. Batterson^ says that Mr. Hyde 
''judged men by their courage in overcoming difficul- 
ties and by successful performance. For excessive 
conservatism and timidity he had little time or pa- 
tience. Tender as a woman in his friendships, the 
charm of his confidence will never be forgotten by 
those who were near enough to enjoy its earnest ex- 
pression." 

In his management of agents, Mr. Hyde was a re- 
markable man. Mr. Whitcomb, agent at Burlington, 
Vermont, says : " I had been advised that Mr. Hyde 
would probably become the foremost man in the world 
in the business of life assurance. He said to me that 
if I wanted to engage with a company in which the 
agent and the policy-holder were both cared for, in 
which there was no 'note humbuggery' (the disease 

1 President of the Travelers' Insurance Company. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 73 

of life assurance business at that time), he could give 
me a situation that I would afterwards, when I came 
to know more about it, be pleased to hold. I had not 
been with the Society three months before he came 
to Burlington and outlined to me his idea of the as- 
surance business. He was a genius in his way of get- 
ting at the subject-matter to be considered. Nothing 
seemed to be able to deter him from what he thought 
was right." 

Mr. Byron A. Beal says : " Mr. Hyde's quick and 
unerring judgment of character was illustrated by the 
way he treated a certain agent who had desired to hold 
a contract with the Equitable Society. He was a large 
underwriter, and Mr. Hyde knew him and was anxious 
to make a contract with him. After arranging every 
detail, a contract was agreed upon, and the matter was 
practically closed ; but the agent, believing that he 
could secure figures just a little better than had been 
agreed upon, said : ' Now, Mr. Hyde, add five per -cent, 
to that contract and I will sign it' Quick as a wink, 
he replied : * No, sir, you cannot make any contract 
with the Equitable,' and he never did." 

Mr. Hyde established and maintained the closest 
relations with the agents of the Society. From time 
to time he traveled into all parts of the country to visit 
the agencies and inform himself about their condition. 
In a letter written from the New Orleans agency in 
December, 1870, he said: *' I have been so much in 



74 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



sleeping-cars during the past few weeks that I really 
feel more at home in a Pullman car than in a hotel. Is 
it not a pretty severe education that brings a man up 
to this standard of perfection ? But you know my 
opinion, often expressed, that the business of life in- 
surance has ceased to be a business of luxury." In a 
letter to an agent who was doing a large business, he 
said : " If you were to ask what fault I see in your 
methods, I would say that you involve yourself in ex- 
penses without knowing where you are going to get 
the money to pay for them." To another who was 
not punctual in his remittances of money due, he 
wrote: *' It is easy to get lax in money matters, and 
when an agent does get in that way he is of no use 
to me." ^ 

The Hon. Chauncey M. Depew, who as a director 
of the Society was closely associated with Mr. Hyde 
for a quarter of a century, says: ''He was at his best 
at the dinners given to agents. He had been a very 
successful agent himself and was in touch equally with 
the veteran canvasser and the beginner. The amount 

1 " In the old days," says Mr. days' duration. During these ses- 
James W. Alexander, " when the sions they told one another their 
time of the chief officers was not methods of succeeding in canvass- 
so much taken up with adminis- ing, and Mr. Hyde would supple- 
trative work as at present, it was ment them with his own experience, 
one of Mr. Hyde's favorite methods These conventions were of vast use 
of improving the business to get in those days, and always wound up 
all the general agents and mana- with a feast, at which the loyalty 
gers in the country together in New and Equitable spirit of the men were 
York for conventions of several excited to the highest pitch." 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 75 

of encouragement and hope he would convey, and the 
methods of securing poHcies which he would suggest, 
transformed many discouraged men into able agents. 
He had the faculty of inspiring Equitable agents with 
a passionate faith in the company, and an enthusiasm 
for its triumphant progress which a soldier has for the 
flag under which he fights." 

He not only visited the agencies, instructed and 
and encouraged workers in the field by personal in- 
terviews and electrifying speeches when they assem- 
bled to meet him, but he originated the system of 
periodically sending to the agents letters informing them 
of the position attained by the business of the Society, 
and stimulating them to renewed efforts in their work. 
Most of these circulars were the outcome of long 
thought and patient labor. 

Mr. Hyde was the master of a terse, forcible literary 
style, and he insisted that not only the most important 
publications of the Society, but every canvassing docu- 
ment and every letter, should be accurate in its state- 
ments, carefully expressed, and dignified in tone.^ Mr. 
William Alexander, the secretary, says: ''Nothing was 
more characteristic of Mr. Hyde than the unwritten law 
established by him that for all literary work done for 
the Society the highest possible standard should be 

1 In a letter written from the blues. I shall now give my time 

South, in January, 1871, in refer- to this department. You will see 

ence to certain documents, he said : a change, or my name is not 

" They are enough to give one the Hyde." 



^e HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

fixed. He was intolerant of a careless or slipshod 
style. His own style was terse, direct, and vigorous ; 
and as he seldom wrote with his own hand, usually 
dictating hastily, he never allowed anything of impor- 
tance to go out over his signature which had not 
been carefully revised by himself and by at least one 
other person. Often, after asking me to criticize what 
he had written, he would pass the composition on to 
some one else, and if a single flaw were then discov- 
ered he would not hesitate to indicate his displeasure. 
Anything that was flippant, or obscure, or in question- 
able taste, he regarded as beneath the dignity of the 
great business in which we were engaged. In cor- 
recting a proof, he worked with great rapidity, cutting 
and carving the ' copy,' and covering the page with 
hastily scrawled directions, until those who were called 
upon to decipher his hieroglyphics and to execute his 
instructions were often at their wits' end. But he 
would never himself look at anything but a clean 
proof, and would never read a letter or a printed 
document prepared in the office in which there was a 
single correction or interlineation." 

Many extracts have been made from Mr. Hyde's cir- 
culars to agents, and these have passed not only 
from one agency to another, but from one line of busi- 
ness to another. They have been printed and circu- 
lated in various forms and at various times as maxims 
and truths to serve as a stimulus to energy and as a 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ^^ 

mental tonic. Nothing, perhaps, is more indicative of 
Mr. Hyde's wondrous force and energy than these 
circular letters sent from time to time to the agents 
of the Society.^ 

President James W. Alexander, in recalling Mr. 
Hyde's labors as a field-worker, says : '' When the 
Equitable Society started, Mr. Hyde took off his coat, 
went into the field with Dr. Edward W. Lambert, who 
was then, as he is now, chief medical examiner of the 
company, and canvassed for risks himself, and almost up 
to the last of his life he was ready, when an agent found 
it impossible to close with an applicant, to put on his 
hat and go out and help him do it, and the instance 
was rare when he did not succeed. His personality 
in his intercourse with business men was magnetic ; he 
had an eye like an eagle's, and when he talked to the 
man opposite to him, he looked him through and 
through, and it was only here and there that the 
person to whom he addressed himself was not brought 
absolutely within the power of his influence. Mr. 
Hyde always claimed that one of the chief elements of 
success in an agent was the ability to enforce his will 
on the mind of the man with whom he might be dealing." 

In those days his labors were incessant. Not sat- 
isfied with the reports from this or that section of the 
country, believing that this manager or that needed 
"stirring," he boarded the train and appeared at the 

1 See Appendix, page 213. 



y^ HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

agency which was in default of the proper amount of 
business. Life assurance to him was more than a 
business ; it was a faith, a cult. Dominated by it him- 
self, he speedily imbued others with its spirit. An 
enthusiast himself, he converted his associates into 
enthusiasts. He maintained that the Equitable Life 
Assurance Society was, of all the companies, the 
'' agents' company," and he so conducted its affairs 
as to make this no idle boast. In him the agents 
recognized their leader, one who had no equal in the 
Society's agency work. They listened to his speeches 
at convention or banquet with the interest that an en- 
thusiastic pupil gives to the eloquent instructor. 



CHAPTER X 

CARE AND CONSERVATISM 

One of Mr. Hyde's chief characteristics was caution. 
He never departed from safe and conservative lines. 
Innovations in estabHshed methods of business were 
not made until he had convinced himself that circum- 
stances justified the, step he was resolved to take, and 
that he was prepared to maintain the new position. 

In this particular Mr. Alexander says : '' It is worthy 
of note that with all the ambition, zeal, pressure, and 
even innovations," put into the early development of the 
Equitable Society, " Mr. Hyde never for one instant 
allowed himself, or those under his direction, to swerve 
one hair s breadth from those great principles which are 
the fundamental basis of our scientific business. 

'* For example : He insisted from the start that the 
business should be transacted on a cash basis. In 
those days a large number of companies took from 
policy-holders a portion of the premium, say forty or 
fifty per cent, in a promissory note. This note was a 
charge against the policy, and it was generally repre- 

79 



8o HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

sented by agents for those companies that the divi- 
dends would offset the notes. But as interest was 
charged up against the notes, and the dividends did 
not amount to enough to offset them, great dis- 
satisfaction among poHcy-holders ensued, and sacri- 
fices and lapses and disorganization were the result. 
Before these chickens came home to roost, Mr. Hyde 
saw the folly of the plan, and insisted that the business 
of the Equitable Society should be transacted in cash, 
in spite of the fact that for a new company, commencing 
business in the face of so many obstacles and against 
such odds, a much greater business could have been done 
on the note plan. It is a great tribute to his wise 
foresight that the note plan was generally abandoned," 
Mr. Hyde's conservatism is well illustrated by the 
care and caution with which he fixed the limitation 
of risks. When the Equitable Society commenced 
business the maximum sum on a single risk taken 
by the Mutual Life was $10,000. To meet compe- 
tition Mr. Hyde fixed the Equitable's limit at $10,000, 
but he took care to reassure in other companies the 
excess of one half of that amount. In December, 1861, 
he was convinced that the Society could safely assume 
the whole risk of $10,000 on a single life ; and five 
years later, in December, 1866, he led all other life 
assurance companies by extending the limit to $25,- 
000. Two years later he advanced the risk to 
$50,000. None of these changes were made with- 
out the advice of the officers, including always Mr 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 8i 

George W. Phillips, the actuary, and Dr. Edward W. 
Lambert, the medical director. 

Mr. Hyde's ambition was to see the Society write 
a policy for $100,000. For this he waited fifteen years. 
Referring to the matter in 1885, after reviewing the 
situation, he says : '' It is not too sweeping an assertion 
to say that this Society has uniformly combined the 
greatest degree of caution in the selection of risks 
with the most progressive policy in regard to the limit 
of the risk on each life, as soon as an increase in 
such limit has been justified by the magnitude of its 
operations. It has always, since passing the limit 
of $10,000, been in advance in this respect, and 
has been followed by the other great companies. 
At a special meeting of the Board held Decem- 
ber 18, 1883, a written statement submitted by the 
officers to the committee on insurance, showing the 
expediency of extending the limit on single lives to 
$100,000, was read to the Board. The Society's se- 
nior medical director made a brief explanation of the 
precautions taken by the Society in accepting large 
risks, whereupon it was unanimously resolved that 
the action of the committee be approved and that the 
limit be extended to $100,000."^ 

*'When I undertook the management of the medical 
department," said Dr. Lambert, '' I shall never forget 
the advice Mr. Hyde gave me. It was simply this : 

1 With the extension of the Society's business the hmit has 
since been raised to $250,000. 



82 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

' I shall bring you business ; it is your duty to make 
a proper selection and only take the best risks.' " 

Years afterwards Dr. Lambert said : ** When I look 
back over an experience of forty years, I fail to find 
a single instance when Mr. Hyde even hinted at 
making an exception in favor of an applicant. How 
often agents went to him and bitterly scored the medi- 
cal department ! They would advocate the health 
and eligibility of their applicants. Mr. Hyde would 
look at them with his great, searching eyes, and 
ask : ' What does Lambert say ? Does he say no ? 
Well, you know I can't do anything with Lambert.' 
That is the way he had of closing the argument." 

Dr. Lambert's statement is confirmed by President 
Alexander in these words : ** It might have been 
thought natural that a man building up a new enter- 
prise in life assurance would have been disposed to 
be lenient in regard to the acceptance of risks. Not 
so Mr. Hyde. From the very beginning his tre- 
mendous influence was brought to bear on the medi- 
cal officers and examiners of the Society rigidly to 
reject doubtful risks and to give the Society always 
the benefit of the doubt. No instance in the whole 
history of the Society can be adduced in which Mr. 
Hyde ever tried to get the medical directors to pass 
a risk about which there had been any question ; on 
the contrary, they had constantly been under a pres- 
sure from him to reject in all such cases." 




AT THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS OF AGE 



CHAPTER XI 

RAPID GROWTH OF THE SOCIETY UNDER 
MR. HYDE'S VIGOROUS MANAGEMENT 

When the Society was in its infancy Mr. Hyde car- 
ried the whole institution easily on his own shoulders. 
He arranged the work of every department, was famil- 
iar with the details of every branch of the business, 
and originated every plan for its enlargement. With 
his increasing knowledge, experience, and strength, 
these labors were comparatively easy. 

When it became impossible for him to watch the de- 
tails of every department of the business, he made it 
a practice to investigate each thoroughly ; studying 
all its ramifications, scrutinizing expenditures, noting 
results, and turning the search-light of his keen intel- 
lect upon the methods of management by its superin- 
tendent. He kept the heads of the different depart- 
ments busy preparing reports and tabulating statements 
of work in hand ; and these, after a careful scrutiny, he 
placed on file for future reference. He received daily 
reports from all the important branches, and was thus 

83 



84 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

constantly informed of the amount of business trans- 
acted ; the amount lost or rejected ; the number and 
amount of death claims presented; the receipts and ex- 
penditures ; the invested funds ; the profits and losses ; 
and the achievements of various agents. He read all 
the papers, including insurance journals. He studied 
the management of all other companies. From day 
to day he made himself familiar with the financial 
situation of the country. He gave the closest atten- 
tion to the condition of the Society's buildings and 
the rentals from tenants. When business flagged, he 
was fertile in resources for stimulating it, and was al- 
ways satisfied with a report of progress, but never 
with a statement that what he wanted could not be 
begun until something else had been finished. On the 
other hand, he was never annoyed at being prodded 
about any work he himself had undertaken to do ; 
in fact, he expressed contrition if any delay was ever 
proved against him. 

There are many men who, when they find that they 
have missed the direct road, turn back. He never did. 
Pressing forward, his indomitable energy carried him 
over every obstacle, and even when forced to cut a 
path through an almost impenetrable forest of difficul- 
ties, he seldom failed to reach the end of the journey 
in advance of those who had started as soon as he, and 
had come by some other way. 

During the four years of the Civil War, as we have 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 85 

seen, the Equitable Society progressed steadily. When 
peace was restored, a thousand industries sprang into 
existence, the hum of commerce filled the united na- 
tion, and the Society was ready to meet the fortunes of 
the future. It had outrun in volume of business four- 
teen of its older competitors, and had left far behind 
every company incorporated subsequent to its own 
organization. The directors held their fifth annual 
meeting on January 11, 1865, and the following ex- 
tracts are taken from the president's report, read at 
that meeting: 

" In inaugurating the business of this Society, in 
entering upon a new and untried field of enterprise, 
we followed, for a time, in the beaten track of those 
who had preceded us in this path, and were safely 
borne along on the full tide of successful experiment. 

*' Forms, customs, principles, habits, were all bor- 
rowed. It became us to be wary, and not wreck our 
bark in the very outset of its career by the introduc- 
tion of novelties, however specious they might appear. 

**Time and experience, and increasing knowledge 
of the business, derived from its daily and practical 
pursuit, brought us to a conviction, impossible to re- 
sist, that life assurance, as a science, should no more 
remain stationary than any other branch of science ; 
that, like all other branches, it was capable of develop- 
ment and improvement ; that in order to be successful, 
or even to hold its own, it must be progressive in pro- 



86 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

portion to the demands and exactions of this progres- 
sive age. Guided by the experience of the past, and 
judging so far as we might of the probable future by a 
calm and anxious survey of the field before us, we 
have, from time to time, deviated from the old track 
and struck out new paths, our course at times proving 
startling to those who clung with obduracy to old 
habits, forms, and opinions. 

''In every case where we have thus acted, the result 
has been eminently successful, as exhibited in a com- 
parison of our condition with that of other companies 
of equal or much longer standing. 

"The aspect of the age has changed since we came 
upon the field : new methods of conducting business 
have been introduced ; new methods of thought have 
been developed ; and to all these changes must the 
mode of business be adapted in order to be successful. 

"To remain stationary, to adhere blindly to old 
dogmas, except when founded on the certainty of 
mathematical science, would be as irrational as to 
require the full-grown man to wear the habiliments 
in which he had been clad in infancy ; still, we would 
deprecate all violent innovations, and any change not 
founded on full examination and deliberate conviction." 



CHAPTER XII 

A TIDE WHICH, TAKEN AT THE FLOOD, 
LED ON TO FORTUNE 

In tracing the Society's advances along certain chan- 
nels we have outrun the narrative, and must again 
revert to the conditions prevailing at the close of the 
Civil War, when an era of commercial and industrial 
activity unprecedented in the chronicles of the nation 
began. In sympathy with the general financial pros- 
perity which then prevailed, the business of life assur- 
ance made great strides forward; and then it was 
that the youthful manager of the Equitable Society 
began to penetrate with prophetic vision the possibili- 
ties of the future, and to prepare in advance the plans 
and methods by which his company should be bene- 
fited by the new industrial conditions. Far-sightedness 
was one of Mr. Hyde's strong characteristics ; desire, 
ambition, hope, never clouded his perceptions. The 
problem. What has the future in store? appeared to 
him easy of solution. He had seen the war coming, and 
had acted with caution ; he now saw peace and pros- 

87 



88 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

perity coming, and he lifted the brakes from the wheels 
of his enterprise. Yet, in reaching out for business he 
never departed from cautious and conservative meth- 
ods. Leaving his competitors behind, he had the 
pleasure of leading the Equitable Society across the 
line of one hundred millions of assurance, having 
used no unsound plan to obtain business, no dangerous 
scheme to attract public attention. It was his ambi- 
tion to be first in the race, but first with honor. Integ- 
rity was his rule of conduct. No contract was made 
with policy-holder or agent, no statements were com- 
piled or published, that could not be viewed and scru- 
tinized and found flawless by the standard of integrity. 
He was the first to carry the business across the 
ocean. He recognized it to be a great advantage to the 
members of a life assurance company to have its risks 
extend over a wide area, thereby securing broad aver- 
ages and reducing to a minimum eccentricities in mor- 
tality among its members which might result from 
wars, or epidemics, or local variations from normal 
conditions. The Equitable Society began to write 
policies in England in 1869, In France in 1870, in Ger- 
many in 1 87 1. Since then the Society has established 
branch offices in the chief cities of other countries. In- 
deed, it is doing business in all important sections of 
the civilized world ; and wherever a special risk is as- 
sumed an adequate extra charge is made, thus main- 
taining the equities between members of different 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 89 

classes — a consideration of the utmost importance to 
a company whose business is conducted on the mutual 
plan. 

Mr. Hyde took great pride in the fact that the 
Society was able to compete successfully with the 
companies of other countries. In Great Britain, for 
example, it transacted from the beginning a large and 
valuable business in competition with a great number 
of British companies, many of which were more than 
a century old, and several of which have been in exis- 
tence for nearly two centuries. He claimed that the 
Equitable Society was selected by residents of distant 
lands in preference to their home companies because of 
the sterling character of its management; that in Great 
Britain and on the continent of Europe those who as- 
sured were more steadfast, on the average, than Amer- 
ican assurants. Such business was, he believed, a 
valuable acquisition, and of a distinct advantage to the 
policy-holders of the Society. In accordance with this 
theory, the Society now carries on a flourishing busi- 
ness in Australia, and has for years transacted in 
Canada a very large business in direct competition 
with the Canadian companies. 

It was stated at the outset, at the time when Mr. 
Hyde was a clerk in the Mutual Life, that he fre- 
quently talked with his father and other agents about 
assurance policies, that he deduced from their expe- 
rience what buyers of assurance sought, and that he 



90 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



appreciated the relationship existing between the 
buyer and the seller of assurance. The knowledge 
thus acquired influenced him ever afterwards in his 
efforts to cause the interests of policy-holders to be 
zealously guarded, advanced, and solidified. Every 
step in his forty years of management is conspicuous 
for his work in that direction. So great was the care 
taken in the selection of risks, that in February, 1875, 
the president, in referring to the early policies, said : 

" I call your attention to the remarkable exemption 
from loss by the death of the assured during the earlier 
years of the Society's existence. After carrying on 
our business for a full year, we had but one death 
among our policy-holders. On January 9, 1861, our 
statement showed that out of more than nine hundred 
policies, assuring more than three millions, but three 
deaths had occurred, and up to that time the claims 
presented had not reached the sum of $15,000, while 
the cash received from premiums amounted to over 
$89,000." 

Mr. Hyde rigidly adhered to the standard rates of 
premiums which have been shown, by the experiences 
of years, to be safe and conservative ; and he saw in 
the greatly increased business of the Society an ap- 
proval of his course by its policy-holders. In spite of 
tremendous pressure, he refused to accept premium 
notes, as was the custom among many of his early 
competitors, insisting that the business of the Society 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 91 

throughout should be conducted for cash. He fore- 
saw imperfections in the annual-dividend system, and 
sought to protect policy-holders by devising a de- 
ferred-dividend policy that should remedy these evils. 
Assured of the safety of the policy-holder, he simplified 
the policy contracts, eliminated onerous conditions, 
and so adapted the business to the needs and require- 
ments of policy-holders that settlements might be liberal 
and payments prompt. At that time all the companies 
issued " cast-iron " assurance contracts, and at the death 
of a policy-holder who had paid premiums in good 
faith for many years, it was too frequently a custom 
with some companies to contest the claim or to com- 
promise it for a fractional part of its face value, if any 
blunder or inaccuracy could be discovered in the ap- 
plication. In 1877 Colonel Walton B. D wight, well 
known throughout central New York, died, leaving poli- 
cies of assurance on his life, in vari£>us companies, ag- 
gregating $256,000. Most of the companies, believing 
that they had good reasons, contested the payment 
of these policies. Mr. Hyde caused an independent 
investigation to be made of the claim against the 
Equitable Society, and becoming satisfied that it 
was entirely legitimate, ordered the payment of the 
$40,000 policy to Colonel Dwight's estate. It was 
paid January 24, 1878. This prompt action, as the 
case attracted wide attention, redounded to the credit 
of the Society. But this was not all. Mr. Hyde 



92 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

brought the whole matter before the directors, and on 
June 27, 1879, they announced that all policies (old as 
well as new), after having been in force for three years, 
should be incontestable. At a later date, this limit 
was reduced to two years, and finally to one year. 
Influenced by the same masterful mind, it was an- 
nounced on January i, 1881, that the payment of 
death claims would be made immediately upon the 
receipt of satisfactory proofs of death, instead of in 
sixty or ninety days as had been the custom. Mr. 
Hyde considered the promptness of the payment of 
a death claim as an obligation to the heirs of the de- 
ceased policy-holder, and one that the Society should 
recognize promptly. His views were characteristi- 
cally expressed in this remark made many years ago : 
** Losses by death do not disturb me in the least. 
The Equitable is in business to pay losses. It was 
not organized to engage in litigation with widows and 
fatherless children, or to make money by receiving 
interest on what may be due them, or by discounting 
policies that should be paid immediately and in full." 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE EQUITABLE SOCIETY UNAFFECTED BY PANICS 

The financial barometers indicated the disturb- 
ance which culminated in the panic of 1873. Mr. 
Hyde, seeing the coming storm, knew that the pre- 
vailing distrust would extend to life assurance com- 
panies, and that disaster and failure would follow in 
the wake of distrust. He determined to place the 
Equitable Society before the business community 
upon a position of absolute impregnability. He in- 
vited an examination of the Society's affairs early 
in the year 1872. A committee of policy-holders com- 
posed of the following gentlemen, Henry F. Spauld- 
ing, Gustav Schwab, George B. Upton, William H. 
Fogg, Felicano Latasa, Eugene Kelly, David Dows, 
Morris K. Jesup, Junius B. Wheeler, Theodore W. 
Dwight, all residents of New York, responded to 
the invitation ; and the Hon. Julius L. Clarke, Insur- 
ance Commissioner of the Commonwealth of Massa- 
chusetts, was invited to join these policy-holders in 
the investigation. This committee made a complete 

93 



94 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



examination, and rendered, on March 30, 1872, an 
exhaustive report, concluding with these words: ''This 
investigation has shown only an honest and efficient 
management, and the undersigned take great pleasure 
in bearing their unanimous testimony to the faithful 
and successful management of the directors and officers 
of the Society of the great trust reposed in them." 

At the quarterly meeting of the directors held on the 
2 2d of October, 1873, the president said : " The recent 
financial convulsion has served to demonstrate the 
security of a properly managed life assurance society 
as a depository for savings, both of the rich and the 
poor. The fact that during the past three years thirty 
life assurance companies in the United States have 
terminated their existence, either by going into liqui- 
dation or by transferring their risks to stronger insti- 
tutions, shows conclusively that there is room in the 
management of a life assurance society for the same 
experience, care, and constant watchfulness which are 
so necessary in the transaction of other financial and 
commercial enterprises. And on this very account the 
directors of the Equitable Society may justly feel sat- 
isfaction that, in the midst of one of the most trying 
emergencies which has ever threatened the stability of 
American commerce and industry, our Society stands 
as a solid rock in the midst of an angry sea, the bul- 
wark and support of those who cling to it." 

No greater evidence of Mr. Hyde's cautious and 




AT THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS OF AGE 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 95 

conservative management can be found than that 
afforded by the record of the Equitable Society during 
the panic of 1873. The Society was in the thirteenth 
year of its existence, when the severest financial panic 
ever experienced in this country involved the business 
world in the deepest gloom. Failures of banks and 
of business firms which had been esteemed most highly 
were of frequent occurrence. Hardly any institution 
was thought to be certainly safe. But in the midst of 
all this distress the strength of soundly managed life 
companies was conspicuously revealed. The strain 
upon other financial institutions brought into strong 
relief the special advantages enjoyed by properly con- 
ducted life companies in times of severe financial 
panic. The Equitable Society closed that year with 
$184,282,130 of assurance in force and assets of 
$22,972,252. The excess of its income over dis- 
bursements was $3,200,123, indicating that it took 
advantage of the panic to make profitable investments 
on unusually favorable terms. Not only did the 
Equitable Society go through the panic without injury, 
but, by its prompt payments and by making loans 
upon adequate securities, it contributed materially to 
lessening the rigors of the situation. 

Mr. Hyde was always quick to read the signs of the 
times, and his motives for action were often obscure 
until the light of subsequent events disclosed them. 
Thus it was that during the early years of the Society, 



96 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

before its world-wide reputation had been firmly es- 
tablished, he invited on several occasions the most 
searching public investigation of its management. 
Two such examinations were made in the year 1877, 
at a time when there had been failures of life com- 
panies and when there was much public apprehension 
regarding financial institutions of all kinds. One of 
these examinations was made by the Insurance De- 
partment of the State of New York. The report 
of that examination, dated ''Albany, April 10, 1877," 
concludes as follows : 

"The examination has been one of the most thor- 
ough and searching character, and the superintendent 
believes that no corporation doing an insurance busi- 
ness has been subjected to severer tests than this 
Society has, nothing having been taken for granted, 
but every item, both of assets and liabilities, conscien- 
tiously and carefully scrutinized. To accomplish this 
a force of ten persons, under the chief examiner of the 
department, has been steadily engaged for nearly three 
months. The superintendent is much gratified at 
being able to state that the result of this investigation 
shows the complete solvency of the institution, and 
that if the same energy and ability are displayed in its 
management and conduct from this time as in the past, 
a career of solid commercial prosperity is before it." 

The other examination was made by a committee 
of distinguished policy-holders (in no way connected 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 97 

with the management of the Equitable), at the invita- 
tion of the president and directors of the Society. 
When the committee inquired as to the " extent and 
scope which the proposed investigations should em- 
brace," Mr. Hyde replied: ''It is the wish that your 
examination should be exhaustive and without reserve 
or limit ; that you consider all and every question rela- 
tive not only to the management and solvency of this 
institution, but also the basis upon which the Equitable 
Society lays claims to the confidence of its policy- 
holders and of the general public." This committee, 
consisting of nine prominent citizens, employed a large 
corps of assistants and a number of experts. The re- 
port of the committee concluded with the following 
paragraph : 

''The business of this Society has been conducted 
with energy, ability, and system, and its unparalleled 
growth since incorporated in 1859 shows uncommon 
industry and vigor on the part of its chief officers and 
directors, and, in the opinion of this committee, places 
the Equitable Life Assurance Society in the front rank 
of institutions of its kind." 

For the better establishment of the Society's business 
in Great Britain, a committee of distinguished English 
actuaries reviewed its management and rendered a 
favorable report in 1873. At a later date, namely, in 
1 88 1, when the Society was bitterly attacked by British 
companies in consequence of the success of its busi- 



gS HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

ness in Great Britain, it was examined by the distin- 
guished mathematician General J. B. Wheeler, under 
an appointment made by the Hon. William R. Grace,. 
Mayor of the City of New York, with the concurrence 
of her British Majesty's consul-general in New York^ 
Sir Edward M. Archibald. 

Concurrently with this examination, a separate and 
distinct investigation was made for the benefit of the 
French policy-holders of the Society, the envy of 
the French companies having threatened to disturb the 
equanimity of the Society's policy-holders in France. 
This examination was made by the French consul- 
general in New York, assisted by Charles Renauld,, 
Esq., president of the French Benevolent Society, and 
P. Maillard, Esq., then resident director in New York 
of the Credit Lyonnais. Other examinations were 
made at other times,— always at the instance of 
President Hyde, — but enough has been told to il- 
lustrate the policy of his action in such cases. 



CHAPTER XIV 

MR. HYDE ELECTED PRESIDENT 

The great progress of the Equitable Society attracted 
universal attention. On the occasion of its fifteenth 
anniversary, the president, in addressing the officers 
and directors, and congratulating them for the So- 
ciety's success, said: "You who know the care with 
which every point has been weighed and every step 
has been taken may justly feel proud in looking upon 
the Equitable, as it stands to-day, as a monument of 
steady labor and well-directed energy." 

But to Mr. Hyde, more than to any other officer, 
may be ascribed the *' well-directed energy" which 
had made the Equitable Society, among all assurance 
companies, the preeminent leader. The man who, in 
i860, would ''stay down at night to take a hand in 
addressing envelopes," had kept " things stirring" 
during all these years. No detail of the business, 
which had grown to be enormous, escaped his atten- 
tion, no department suffered for lack of his personal 
magnetism to inspire it. *' He was," says Mr. Hege- 

L.ofC. 99 



lOO HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

man, '*an incarnate automobile; he could charge him- 
self from within himself, independent of exterior force. 
He needed no power-house ; he was his own dy- 
namo. His capacity for work was a marvel. He 
opened the throttle from the start, and he had no use 
for air-brakes." But Mr. Hyde was not one of those 
men who possess extraordinary power to direct their 
own labors, yet fail signally to direct the labors of 
others. On the contrary, his ability to select men for 
any special task and then to obtain from them a maxi- 
mum of well-directed energy was one of his chief 
characteristics. His judgment of men was seldom at 
fault, and his ability to employ them entitles him to 
rank among the leaders of men. Realizing at the out- 
set that an institution like the Equitable Society would 
require men of varied abilities, he surrounded himself 
with those who were specially adapted to fill the partic- 
ular places in which he put them. His selections from 
the first, approved by long and honorable service, bear 
striking witness to his unerring judgment. His tribute 
to the service rendered the Society by its first president, 
indicated in itself the nicety of his appreciation of the 
importance of the position before the public, and his 
regard for him as a friend, co-worker, and ally. 

Scarce had the joyous echoes of the fifteenth an- 
niversary faded away before the Society was called 
to mourn the loss of President Alexander, who 
died August 23, 1874. On September 2 Henry Bald- 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH loi 

win Hyde was elected president and James W. Alex- 
ander was elected vice-president. 

Thereafter, until Mr. Hyde's death, these two men 
worked side by side in the positions assigned to them. 
Their hands held the rudder which safely guided the 
Equitable Society over the shoals and through the 
storms of a quarter of a century. Mr. Hyde, when 
vice-president, selected Mr. Alexander to be his first 
lieutenant, and regarded him as a successor in the event 
of his prior death. Upon the occasion of the twenty- 
fifth anniversary he said, as if looking into the future : 
" I do not wish to flatter anybody ; flattery has always 
been unpleasant to me, as it must be to everybody ; 
but I wish to make these remarks regarding Mr. James 
W. Alexander, the vice-president of the Society. I 
believe Mr. Alexander to be as well qualified as I am 
to take charge of the executive duties of the Society, 
and he understands the assurance business as well as 
any man living. I have been associated with him for 
nearly twenty years. My intercourse with him has 
always been pleasant ; and I feel that in him you have 
a gentleman who at any time is fully qualified to take 
the presidency of the Society, with the advice of the 
Board and the assistance of the other officers." 

The twenty-five years of Mr. Hyde's presidency 
witnessed a development in the general business of 
life assurance which far outstripped the expectations 
of the greatest of assurance optimists of 1859. What 



I02 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

the Equitable Society did between 1859 and 1874 is a 
matter of record, and what it has subsequently achieved 
is known and read of all men. How Mr. Hyde re- 
garded the growth of the Society may be gathered from 
his reports to the directors. At a meeting held Janu- 
ary 30, 1878, he said: ''The foundation of this company 
being secure, we shall build with care and of the 
best material, not doubting but that the edifice when 
crowned will sustain all the hopes that its friends have 
entertained for it." At a meeting held January 28, 1880, 
he said: "The directors of this Society have now for a 
period of twenty years demonstrated their ability ; and 
as the affairs of this Society are conducted on a sound 
basis, the assets and surplus being largely augmented 
year by year, no backward step ever having been 
taken, those of us who shall survive the period of 
another twenty years will undoubtedly see a corpora- 
tion with assets and surplus greater than it would be 
wise for me to state to-day." In 1884 he said : " I have 
often been asked whether, in the early days of the So- 
ciety, I anticipated such results as have been attained. 
To this I frankly answer no, as in those days we 
struggled chiefly for existence and recognition ; and 
looking to the perpetuity of the trust committed to our 
care, our motto in the future must be: True conserva- 
tism and the highest security for our investments T 

There were periods of financial depression (1884) 
and panics (1893) to disturb commercial and industrial 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 103 

conditions ; but the Equitable Society, true to its prin- 
ciples, weathered every gale, and issued from beneath 
every storm-cloud stronger and greater. That Mr. 
Hyde regarded with keen interest the good the Society 
accomplished, the following observation clearly implies : 
** Without claiming that life assurance is a benevolent 
institution, I know of no other that is, in reality, of 
greater benefit. The life assurance companies of the 
United States in 1883 paid $56,000,000, chiefly to 
widows and orphans, throughout the country, in sums 
averaging $2500. Tt would be impossible to estimate 
the amount of good which has resulted from the dis- 
tribution of this money, generally to the needy and 
dependent. It would be impossible to estimate the 
amount of suffering and anxiety it has saved, and the 
amount of crime it has prevented." 

During his presidency Mr. Hyde carried to success 
the many beneficial innovations which he had inau- 
gurated during the presidency of his predecessor, and 
he also promoted the growth of the Society in many 
and diversified ways, establishing it on substantial and 
conservative grounds. He safeguarded its resources 
so that the interests of the policy-holders were at all 
times protected, and he so established the reputation 
of the Equitable throughout the world that its name 
became a synonyme for protection and security. 

Nature, at last, wearied of the drafts made upon 
it, remonstrated and protested. But Mr. Hyde heeded 



I04 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



neither remonstrance nor protest. His mind was so 
much in his work that he denied himself the rest and 
recreation which his body craved. To his Board of 
Directors, at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Society, 
he spoke of his health in these words: " Ours is not a 
dull, uninteresting work ; it is a work of the keenest 
enjoyments ; and the efforts which our enthusiasm 
prompts us to are only limited by the line that must 
be drawn somewhere to preserve the life and health 
of those engaged in it. In my own case, I am obliged 
to be more careful than in past years, I have broken 
down twice — once in 1869, when I was attacked with 
typhoid fever, and was obliged to spend three months 
in California to recuperate, and again in 1878, when I 
was attacked with a variety of disorders, simply the 
result of overwork. On that occasion I was absent 
from the office for about nine months, going as far 
away from New York as was possible. I now endeavor 
to take periodical seasons of rest, that I may spend 
more time in attending to the business of the Society 
than would otherwise be possible." 

Mr. Hyde fully appreciated the necessity of rest and 
recreation, but, skilful as he was in making plans and 
devising methods, he could never persuade himself to 
arrange periods for recuperation except when, in re- 
sponse to the imperative orders of his physician, he 
was compelled to do so. One summer evening in 
1889 Mr. Bridgman was walking with him through the 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 105 

grounds of his country-seat at Bay Shore, Long Island. 
He had been talking of his labors and their exhaust- 
ing effect upon his health, also of the incessant and 
imperative demands which the business of the Equita- 
ble Society made upon his time and attention, when he 
said : *' I do not need the compensation I am receiving 
from the Society. Those who think that my work is 
for money do not know my motives. If it were not for 
my pride in the Equitable and my love for it, no salary 
would tempt me to render the service that takes so 
much of my strength. Were it not for my devotion to 
the company, I would spend my entire summer here." 



CHAPTER XV 

TRAITS OF A STRONG CHARACTER 

Mr. Hyde's marvelous success was due largely to the 
fact that, when undertaking an important work, he 
never relied upon a part of his equipment if, by bring- 
ing every faculty and resource into action, he could 
render success more certain. 

He was intolerant of waste ; he scrutinized with the 
utmost vigilance all the expenditures of the Society, 
giving as much attention to items which many men 
would consider trivial as to those which all men would 
recognize as of first importance, and he was most par- 
ticular to economize time. 

He worked incessantly, but never wasted his 
strength on what he considered unnecessary labor. 
This often caused embarrassment to his associates 
and assistants. If he knew what he wanted, and 
had ordered it done, he wasted no time in explana- 
tions as to why he wanted it, or what he wanted it for, 
or what the consequence of failure or success would be. 
He expected every man to whom he had given a mis- 

io6 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 107 

sion to exercise judgment and to avoid mistakes ; but 
if he gave definite instructions, and his instructions 
were not literally obeyed, and failure resulted, the man 
soon discovered that he was in disgrace. Those who 
were most successful in securing his commendation 
were those who were able to read his thoughts and 
interpret his wishes when his words were few. Al- 
though he always insisted upon despatch, he required 
the utmost system, accuracy, and neatness in work. 
Sometimes he asked if a piece of work had been fin- 
ished almost as soon as it had been begun. 

He often said to those who were entrusted with im- 
portant commissions, '' Remember that a blunder is 
a crime " [ and he seldom forgave an error which 
seemed in any degree due to stupidity or careless- 
ness.^ On the other hand, he never failed to show 
his appreciation of successful achievement. 

Mr. Hyde's personal appearance, ten years after the 
Society was organized, has been described by a writer 
as follows: "He was taller than the men about him. 
His head was large, but well balanced on his big- 
boned, vigorous frame. His complexion was fair, but 
his cheeks were ruddy with health. His hair, which 

1 Sometimes the "crime" was matter is ancient history now. I trust 

speedily forgiven : "... I was very you will go on with your work that 

much annoyed," he said in a private you are doing so well, feeling assured 

letter. " You were responsible to me ; that you have the confidence of the 

and you should have acted on that officers, and that no one, least of all 

idea. The thing that annoyed me myself, retains any hard feelings to- 

was your error in judgment. The wards you. H. B. Hyde." 



io8 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

was almost black, was brushed out on each side of 
his ears, according to the fashion of the day. He 
wore side-whiskers, and his upper lip and chin were 
clean-shaven. His glance was quick and piercing, 
and the effect produced was greatly heightened 
by his shaggy, black, overhanging eyebrows. But 
the most characteristic feature was his mouth — 
beautiful in shape, exceedingly mobile and sensitive, 
its great firmness tempered by a humorous play at 
the corners." 

When he returned from a journey round the world, 
landing in San Francisco, and coming across the 
continent to New York, one of the junior officials 
of the Society went to meet him at a Chicago hotel 
as he passed through that city. The young man went 
into the dining-room, and, while waiting for his break- 
fast, was annoyed by the persistent gaze of a tall 
stranger who had taken a seat at the opposite side of 
the same table. He was made so uncomfortable by 
the steady stare of this stranger that he was about to 
move his seat to another table, when a spoken word 
revealed the fact that he was none other than Henry B. 
Hyde. He had gone on the journey wearing bushy 
whiskers. He returned wearing a mustache, and the 
rest of his face was clean-shaven. He looked younger 
than before, and his appearance had been so altered 
that some of his friends failed to recognize him upon 
his arrival in New York. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 109 

Mr. George T. Wilson, now third vice-president of 
the Society, says : *' As I think of our late friend and 
departed chief, my mind runs back to a time twenty- six 
years ago, when, as a boy in the office of the Society, I 
first saw him. I can see him now in my mind's eye 
as he walked about the office, apparently supervising 
everything that was going on ; not confining his atten- 
tion to the business of the office, but also superintend- 
ing the erection along Cedar Street of one of the 
extensions to the Equitable Building. I recall the 
deep impression it made upon me to see the head of 
the institution working harder than any clerk. In a 
boyish way, I had an idea, which is more or less preva- 
lent even among those of older years, that the officers 
of great corporations did not have to work very hard. 
I know better now, and my knowing better dates from 
those early days when I was a witness of the hard 
work done by Mr. Hyde. It was my fiirst great object- 
lesson, and it had its influence and made a lasting 
impression. Of course, as an office boy, I was not the 
subject of any attention from the president ; but when 
I happened his way, and he turned that eagle eye 
upon me, I felt that he must be reading my inmost 
thoughts — a feeling which always continued with me. 
He had a wonderful power of penetration and of sizing 
up a man. My first actual experience with Mr. Hyde 
was when I was sent down to his country home on a 
Saturday morning in 1879 to take dictation in con- 



no HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

nectlon with an important and confidential matter of 
business. I recall the feeling of elation at the thought 
of the confidence placed in me; but I must confess 
that at the same time I went with a great deal of 
trepidation ; for even thus early I had learned that 
Mr. Hyde, while fully appreciative, on the one hand, 
of work well done, was, on the other hand, intolerant 
of mistakes. The particular business that engrossed 
Mr. Hyde's attention at that time was a fight against 
the injudicious and unscientific action of another com- 
pany. The battle was fought out that Saturday as he 
dictated his plan of campaign. So engrossed was he 
in his subject that he did not keep track of the flight 
of time. It was necessary for me to hasten to catch 
the last train of the day. Mr. Hyde drove with me 
to the station, but we were too late. I had not come 
prepared to remain overnight, but he took me in as 
one of the family, and kept me over Sunday. I recall 
with delight that evening, as he gave to friends, who 
dropped in to extend greetings to him on his recent 
return from a trip round the world, his experiences 
and impressions of various places. It was like an 
illustrated lecture. The next day, Sunday, I walked 
with him, and he talked of the Equitable Society, of 
the world of men and affairs, and yet again and again 
and again of the Society. It is very often said that a 
man cannot be thoroughly known unless he can be 
seen outside of his business. Here was a great man 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH m 

apparently engrossed body and soul in his business, 
with no thought of anything else, nor showing any 
other side of his nature to the world, whom, by the 
revelations resulting from this personal contact at his 
own home, I found to be one of the most genial, 
tender, sympathetic, and noblest of men. I thanked 
my lucky stars that it had been my privilege thus 
early in my business career to have this experience. 
It was the beginning of a sentiment and friendship 
which I have treasured as a priceless possession, and 
to which I owe more than I can express. When I sit 
and think of the past, I recall the walk of that Sun- 
day, and, in connection with it, other walks at other 
times and in other places, in foreign cities, London 
and Paris, and elsewhere with Mr. Hyde, who, as is 
well known, greatly enjoyed walking. 

*' It is quite if not altogether impossible, in writing 
about Mr. Hyde, to separate him from the Equitable 
Society ; its record is the record of his life, and vice 
versa; but if I were asked to name traits outside 
of those so well known in his business, such as 
his great industry, devotion to business, tremendous 
energy, intuitive knowledge of men, ready grasp of 
complicated questions, promptness in deciding them, 
ability to surmount obstacles, no matter how appa- 
rently insuperable, indomitable will, and all those other 
great qualities which he possessed to such an unusual 
degree and which have resulted in the upbuilding of 



112 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

the Equitable Society to what it is to-day, I should say 
that the characteristic which impressed me most in Mr. 
Hyde's make-up was his appreciation of loyalty, faith- 
fulness, and good work. His commendation of work 
well done was as pronounced as was his criticism of 
mistakes and work badly done. We often see men 
who, while critical and outspoken about unsuccessful 
work, rarely, if ever, express appreciation of good 
work ; who never pat a man on the back, figuratively 
speaking, and say, 'Well done.' I cannot imagine 
anything more stimulating — at least, there never 
has been anything more so to me — than to have 
Mr. Hyde express approval of work well done. An- 
other trait which impressed me greatly, apart from 
those which were so much in the eye of those asso- 
ciated with him in business, was his sense of justice. 
I have often heard him say that if he had done the 
boot-black down-stairs an injustice and was convinced 
of it, he would go to the boot-black and tell him so. 
This was not merely an empty expression, for, as a 
matter of fact, he acted up to this principle, and I can 
recall many illustrations of it." 

Mr. William H. Mclntyre, now fourth vice-president 
of the Society, who also came into the service of the 
Equitable as a boy, and who was for many years Mr. 
Hyde's private secretary, says : 

" I shall never forget the first time I saw Henry B. 
Hyde. It was about February, 1880, and I was then 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 113 

a messenger boy in the outside office of the Equitable. 
Passing along the hall one day, near the door leading 
to the president's office, I saw a man coming toward 
me who seemed tall as a pine, and with the eye of an 
eagle. I knew instantly, by his distinguished and 
commanding presence, that it was Henry B. Hyde. 
Boy-like, I stood filled with awe. In the course of 
time I was brought into personal contact with him, and 
in the years following, as I worked by his side, my 
thoughts would go back to the day when I first saw 
him. My admiration of his sterling qualities ever 
increased, and I soon learned to love as well as to 
respect him. 

'' During all the time I knew him, he never wavered 
from his one great purpose, the ambition of his life, the 
upbuilding of the Equitable. This work occupied his 
thoughts day and night, and I know he used to tell 
Mrs. Hyde that the only thing of which she could ever 
be jealous was the Equitable. Holding his own per- 
sonal interests as of secondary value, he was always 
willing to sacrifice himself to the end that the business 
to which he had devoted his life might prosper. I 
remember on one occasion that he was approached by 
a man near to him, and having his confidence, who 
asked if Mr. Hyde would object to his purchasing an 
interest in a certain security, held chiefly by the Equi- 
table, on which profits were sure and quick. Mr. Hyde 
replied : ' I wish you would not do it. I want the 



114 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

Equitable to get it all.' That security has since in- 
creased in value a thousandfold ; but Mr. Hyde would 
never enlarge his own small holding (taken at the time 
of its original allotment) because he wanted the 
Society to have the entire benefit. Perhaps nothing 
better illustrated this trait of his character than his 
aversion to any public notice of his personality. Time 
and again he was applied to for permission to publish 
his photograph. The request was always refused, and 
he often sent me to call on the publishers, and, if ne- 
cessary, threaten to sue should they publish his portrait. 
He said : * They may publish all they please about the 
Equitable, and let that be my monument ; but I do not 
wish my own photograph to be published ' ; and, so 
far as I know, the only time his likeness ever appeared, 
the picture was surreptitiously obtained. Many times 
he was asked for authority to print his reminiscences 
[part of which appear in this book], but he always 
shrank from it, his desire being so strong to have his 
own identity merged with that of the Equitable. 

" His confidence in the men with whom he had sur- 
rounded himself was very great. When once his trust 
was placed it seemed almost impossible to shake it. If 
any one in whom he had faith failed him, he would not 
believe it unless the positive proof were laid directly 
before him. Even then he was unwilling to punish, 
so great was his charity. Incidents of this nature — 
happily not frequent — had a saddening and depress- 




AT FIFTY-FIVE YEARS OF AGE 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 115 

ing effect upon him. He always said, however, that 
it was hard for him to forgive a Har or a thief Any 
work well done was sure of his commendation, and 
he took pleasure in telling of it to those about him. 
This shows how well he knew the incentives to ambi- 
tion. Equally well he knew when a stern word was 
needed, and failure on the part of any employees to 
succeed in tasks in which success might reasonably be 
expected was sure to receive his criticism. The ex- 
cuse might be attempted that they had used great 
exertions, walked long miles, or tried many experi- 
ments, all to no end. Then he would quietly say, ' I 
want results, not futile endeavors,' and results invari- 
ably ensued, because his criticisms were made only 
when deserved. Sometimes he would show impatience 
with those who relied upon others and had no indepen- 
dence of thought ; and to such an one I once heard 
him say : * Go butt your head against a stone wall, to 
get a thought of some kind into it' 

" One of his standing rules was that all agents of 
the Society should have free access to his office and 
to his time. I never knew him refuse to see an 
agent, no matter on what business he might come. 
He enjoyed his intimacy with their work and his famil- 
iarity with their needs. His knowledge of the details 
of the Society's business, and the keenness of his watch 
over them, were wonderful. He could digest an in- 
tricate statement more quickly and thoroughly than 



ii6 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

any one I ever knew, and his memory was such that 
he never needed to refer to it again. Inaccuracies he 
could find as if by instinct. I remember that there 
was sent to him on one occasion a statement of per- 
centages which was supposed to be correct beyond 
all question of doubt, but Mr. Hyde pointed out errors 
in it without referring to anything but his memory. 
While a master of figures himself, he believed in the 
wisdom of putting things in the plainest manner pos- 
sible, so that they could be understood by every one. 
He was averse to any complex statements of the 
Society's business. He always wanted to see the 
darker as well as the brighter side, and if the head 
of a department, seeking to please him, should bring 
something that looked well on paper, but did not show 
all the facts, Mr. Hyde was not to be deceived. He 
insisted upon seeing all sides. It was upon such facts 
that he formed his plans. 

" Mr. Hyde was one of the first men to systematize 
the keeping of memoranda, and he was never to be 
found without his pocket memorandum-book. It was 
with him during every hour of the day, and was within 
reach even as he slept, for often, during the night, he 
would awake and record some thought in it. The 
book was a creation of his own, and was so arranged 
that each sheet could be inserted or removed at will. 

*' He took every opportunity to impress upon others 
the usefulness and importance of keeping daily memo- 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 117 

randa. I remember his doing so at a large agency 
dinner, when he said that he made it a rule never to 
be without his book ; and one of the agents present, 
thinking that, as Mr. Hyde was in evening dress, he 
would certainly not have the book with him, called 
out : ' I'll bet you haven't it with you now ! ' 

" Mr. Hyde stopped, and everybody laughed as he 
felt in his right-hand pocket and found no book there. 
'Wait,' said he, 'I have not finished yet,' and he 
produced the book from the other side, holding it up 
in triumph before the audience. 

''In his leisure moments — unhappily so few — his 
charm of manner and greatness of heart were particu- 
larly evident. At such times those who knew him 
well felt keenly the pleasure of his presence. He 
talked of the past, but more often of the future ; and 
I believe that the whole story of his life would be, 
not only of intense interest, but an education in itself 
for any one. 

"To know him was to love him — the greatest, the 
truest, and the noblest of men." 



CHAPTER XVI 



A PERMANENT HOME 



There never was a prouder moment in Mr. Hyde's 
life than when, at the annual meeting of the directors 
held in January, 1868, authority was given to proceed 
at once with the construction of an Equitable Building 
on the site secured by the special committee September 
16, 1867. The ground covered a space of 10,092 
square feet on the southeast corner of Broadway and 
Cedar Street, with a frontage of 86 feet 7 inches on 
Broadway, and 134 feet 5 inches on Cedar Street. 
At this time the Society he had created was only eight 
and a half years old. Its assets were only $5,000,000, 
its surplus only $382,663, and its income only $3,247,- 
000 ; and he who had been mainly instrumental in 
achieving this success was only in his thirty-fourth 
year. To know that success had rewarded his efforts 
in the past, and that still greater success awaited him 
in the future, must necessarily have afforded him the 
keenest satisfaction. He had conquered where others 
had failed ; he had builded well where disaster had 

118 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 119 

been prophesied ; and the knowledge that the Equita- 
ble Society would ever after possess its own home, that 
it would ever after be recognized as a great institution 
of local and national importance, must have filled his 
heart with rejoicing. 

The gentlemen appointed to serve on the building 
committee were Messrs. William G. Lambert, Henry 
G. Marquand, William Tilden Blodgett, John Auchin- 
closs, and Henry B. Hyde. This committee was au- 
thorized to proceed forthwith to construct a building 
under the plans of Messrs. Gilman & Kendall, archi- 
tects, with Mr. George B. Post as consulting architect 
in matters of construction. The building was com- 
pleted on May i, 1870. In October of that year Mr. 
Hyde was in San Francisco making a personal exam- 
ination of the Equitable Society's agency. Returning 
eastward, he turned aside to survey the scenery of the 
Sierras, and writing home he said : ''I put my head 
at the base of a perpendicular rock six thousand feet 
high, and looked ever so far into the clouds; but some- 
how the sight did not impress me so much as when I 
saw the last cornice stone of the Equitable Building 
put in its place." 

This was the first ofHce building that was equipped 
with passenger-elevators. Many years after, Mr. 
Hyde, in referring to these elevators, said : *' It is a 
very singular fact that at the time the first Equitable 
Building was approaching completion there was not a 



I20 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

single elevator in New York in a structure devoted 
exclusively to office purposes. All the members of 
the building committee, except myself, were opposed 
to the introduction of elevators, but finally consented 
to have one erected. It required quite a struggle on 
my part to obtain their consent to put two in the build- 
ing." This innovation was immediately justified by 
the great impetus which it gave to the renting of 
rooms on the upper floors of what was then the high- 
est office building in the United States ; the portion of 
the building not then required for the business of the 
Society was completely occupied by tenants soon after 
it was finished. 

Mr. B. R. Miller, who became an agent of the 
Society in 1867, says: *' While the Equitable Building 
was going up the opinion was generally expressed 
that it would be hard to find tenants for the upper 
stories. Mr. Hyde claimed that for lawyers and 
others similarly situated the upper floors, if made 
easily accessible, would be more comfortable and ap- 
propriate than those near the level of the street ; and 
he proceeded to demonstrate practically his new and 
startling theory, in spite of the sneers of real-estate 
men. I came down very early one morning, and there 
was Mr. Hyde, with his coat off, showing the rooms in 
the building to a party of gentlemen. He gave much 
of his time to this work and rented most of the offices 
himself." 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 121 

But this building, which was looked upon with skep- 
tical amusement by real-estate experts, was but one 
step in advance of the new era of office buildings, and 
only one step in advance of the requirements of the 
Society. In three years' time the rooms set apart for 
the use of directors, officers, clerks, and agents proved 
inadequate to the demands ; and on March 26, 1874, a 
second building committee was appointed, with author- 
ity to purchase four additional lots on Cedar Street and 
one on Pine Street, and to build thereon an extension. 
Upon this committee were appointed Messrs. William 
G. Lambert, Henry A. Hurlbut, Henry G. Marquand, 
James Low, T. S. Young, James M. Halsted, and 
Henry S. Terbell. During subsequent years the 
growth of the Society made necessary the purchase of 
other adjacent and contiguous lots, so that at the 
close of Mr. Hyde's period of labor there had passed 
under the control or ownership of the Equitable 
Society the entire block bounded by Broadway, Pine, 
Cedar, and Nassau streets. The wisdom and foresight 
of the administration of the Society have been proved 
not only by the fact that the building stands in the 
very heart of the financial precinct, but also that it has 
increased in value as an investment. " One of Mr. 
Hyde's favorite phrases," says Mr. Depew, *' was, 
* Only the best pays.' He illustrated this by the 
Equitable Building, which was erected where land 
was expensive, and it was constructed apparently on 



122 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

a lavish scale. But position and elegance drew 
tenants and secured rents which justified the invest- 
ment, and the value of the whole as an advertisement 
of the Equitable Society cannot be estimated." 

The motives which prompted Mr. Hyde's action 
were accurately read by Mr. Depew, for, on the 26th 
of April, 1876, shortly before he became a mem- 
ber of the Board, Mr. Hyde said to the directors: 
*'The expression of my desire for economy, and the 
reference to exemption in the past from the penalties 
of error which have been suffered by others, may lead 
some one to ask, 'Why provide these extensive offices, 
these superb accommodations, these almost unlimited 
facilities for the transaction and increase of our business, 
undoubtedly unequaled in the world ? ' To such in- 
quiry I answer : Because this Society may be regarded 
as having passed through only its preliminary and 
experimental stage ; because our real career has only 
just begun ; because with energetic and judicious 
management, and with the necessary accommodation 
and facilities, this Society is destined to become one 
of the greatest and most successful corporations in the 
world ; and if great and successful, its benign influence 
upon its beneficiaries will be correspondingly wide- 
spread and beneficent. One has only to examine with 
care the extent of the operations of the Society in the 
past, while in its formative period, and then with the 
eye of fancy to look from these into the future, to bring 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 123 

before the mind's eye a view of benefits to be conferred 
upon the public almost too vast to be comprehended, 
and an influence to be exerted throughout the world 
which can scarcely be estimated." 

The reconstructed and enlarged building was com- 
pleted in 1888, in accordance with the designs and under 
the personal supervision of the distinguished architect 
Mr. George B. Post; but the character of the structure, 
and its conspicuous success, not only on account of 
its throng of important and prominent tenants, but 
because of its influence in fittingly typifying the solidity 
and prosperity of the Society, bear the indelible impress 
of Mr. Hyde's individuality. As he once wrote policies 
with his own hand, and helped the clerks in addressing 
envelopes, so in later years, when the Equitable Build- 
ing was begun, he gave as much attention to the details 
of its construction as did the architects. Every year 
he interested himself personally in the rentings of the 
building. When springtime approached his order to 
the superintendent was: ''Begin at once to work our 
rents up. You can bring to me anybody to whom 
you wish to rent a room." He wanted to know 
daily, and in detail, about the condition of the build- 
ing, sometimes sending some one to make a quiet 
inspection of it unbeknown to the janitor ; for, as he 
said, **The Equitable Building being very large, the 
best janitor would be likely to neglect some part of it." 



CHAPTER XVII 



MR. HYDE AS A TRAVELER 



In September, 1878, Mr. Hyde sailed from New York 
for England, with intention to make a journey around 
the world should circumstance favor it. The letters 
which he wrote to his family while he traveled, and 
those which, after his return, he wrote to friends in 
foreign lands whose hospitalities he had enjoyed, and 
those which, in after years, he wrote to friends going 
abroad, urging them to push beyond the usual limit 
of pleasure tours and *'put a girdle round about the 
world," as he had done, show the man in a new and 
admirable light. He was a naturalist in the sense 
that he was a close observer and represented truthfully 
what he saw. As this was his first visit to foreign 
lands, he carried, wherever he went, the enthusiasm 
of a discoverer ; and his sketches of scenes and in- 
cidents, touched occasionally with humor, were so 
clear and forcible that the recipients of them might 
have imagined that they had been traveling in his 
company. 

124 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 125 

The first thing that he did, on arrival of the outward- 
bound ship off Queenstown, was to mail a long letter 
to his children, in which he described the voyage with 
such detail as would interest them. Here are a few 
extracts from the letter : 

My dear Children : I am going to address the envelope of this 
letter to you, and if the Irishmen in the post-office at Queenstown 
know who you are they will send it right along. ... At noon the 
steamship backed out into the river, and then started down the har- 
bor. When she was abreast of the Equitable Building, the Equitable 
flag was lowered and hoisted three times, and the ship returned this 
salute by blowing her whistle three times and dipping her flags three 
times. . . . When I went to my little room to retire for the night, it 
was very, very uneasy : now one side went down and the other rolled 
up ; then this went down and that rolled up, so that it was very hard 
work to undress. After a while my berth whirled around to where 
I was standing, when I waited for a good chance and jumped in. 
The big engine hammered and banged away all night, making an 
awful noise, but I slept for all that, and next morning I felt pretty 
well. ... I will try to tell you how the days are spent at sea. 
About seven o'clock a cup of coffee is brought to our room, and 
perhaps we eat some oranges. Breakfast is on the table at eight 
o'clock. We are sailing east, and the sun rises upon us half an 
hour earlier every day. At breakfast the captain's white cat comes 
in to see us ; a very pretty cat she is, and a good sailor. A gentle- 
man who sits opposite to me at the table has made a sketch of puss 
which I shall send to you in this letter. After breakfast the passen- 
gers walk on deck or play shovel-board and quoits. At one o'clock 
we have a luncheon. Dinner is at six o'clock. We sit at the captain's 
table. ... I went forward among the steerage passengers one day, 
when a boy came to me and said : '* How do you do, Mr. Hyde ? " 
I knew his face, but did not know where I had seen him. He said 
he delivered newspapers to our house last year, and he is going to 
England to see his mother. . . . Some days when the wind is fair 
all the sails are set. The sailors pull the ropes that hoist the sails, 



126 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

singing as they pull: " Hoo-ray! up she rises, hoo-ray! up she rises, 
hoo-ray! up she rises, early in the morning." We have seen a 
whale ! 

After traveling hither and thither in Europe, Mr. 
Hyde sailed from Marseilles for Egypt. From Alex- 
andria he went to Cairo, and there he loitered like a 
traveler at leisure. One day he climbed to the sum- 
mit of the Great Pyramid ; another day he studied, 
from the back of a donkey, the mystery of the Sphinx's 
face ; occasionally he dined on the dahabiyehs of New 
York friends who were bound up the Nile ; often he 
spent an afternoon in the veranda of his hotel watching 
the procession of all sorts and conditions of men that 
passes daily along the street. In a letter to his family 
dated at Cairo, December 14, 1878, he said: 

. . . Let me describe the scene now before me while I am sitting 
in the veranda of the hotel. Along the entire front of the house 
stretches a garden containing the richest of tropical trees, shrubs, and 
plants in the full perfection of foliage and flower. In the street be- 
yond passes a carriage in which is seated a brilliantly dressed Egyp- 
tian officer, a fez, of course, on his head; then pass carriages 
containing ladies dressed in rich European garments, with attendants 
in lace 'and gold, preceded by sices dressed in flowing white robes, 
shouting as they run ahead of the horses to clear the way. Next 
comes a train of camels laden with bales of straw, raising their heads 
high in the air, and wearing an expression of patience that tells of 
their solitary home in the desert. Then come many little donkeys, 
some of them bearing riders larger and heavier than themselves; 
then women so veiled that only their eyes can be seen ; others are 
carrying children astride the shoulders ; white Arabian horses trot 
by ; then pass loud-talking dragomans, Nile boatmen, and a motley 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 127 

throng of people from various lands — Bedouins of the desert, Nubi- 
ans, whose faces are as black as coal, men and women from Eng- 
land and America wearing the Indian topee, or white turban, the 
ends falling over the shoulders. Beyond the street is a large park, 
where a military band is playing. Still farther beyond are the quaint 
buildings of old Cairo, and a low range of mountains, and a blue 
sky— such a blue as is not to be seen at home. 

From Cairo Mr. Hyde traveled to Suez, where he 
took passage in a British mail -steamer for Bombay. 
In a letter dated at New York, December 20, 1887, to 
one whom he would persuade to go to India, he said : 

... I am up to my eyes in business. There is nothing unusual 
about that, however; it is the same old thing. I have wished 
many times that I was with you in Italy and afterwards in Egypt. 
That is all past now, and I am back in the general grind of life. 

Your last postal card informs me that you have changed your 
mind about going to Egypt. I regret this. Of course there are 
certain disagreeable troubles there ; and if you catch cold it is liable 
to affect your eyes. However, the danger is not great. I remem- 
ber when I was in Cairo in 1878, and about to proceed on my jour- 
ney. General Batchelder endeavored to get me to change my mind 
and not go any farther. With stoical indifference I went on to Suez, 
and there embarked for Bombay, intending to make a tour in India. 
I have always been glad that I went. I found India as healthy as 
any country when the traveler takes care of himself, and one or two 
grains of quinine daily. Where one is constantly changing his cli- 
mate and food, he needs a tonic such as that to equalize the burdens 
of travel. 

If you go to Egypt, and ride a donkey in Cairo, and climb the 
Great Pyramid, and muse over the Sphinx, and are tricked by the 
silversmiths in the bazaar, and think you have seen things wonderful 
enough for a lifetime, go to India and find how mistaken you are. 
The voyage is a pleasure cruise, in the proper season. In a few 
days you have passed through the Red Sea and are at Aden, a Brit- 



128 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

ish harbor, town, and fortress. Then, after six or seven days of 
smooth seas and balmy winds, you greet the hghts of Bombay. You 
will find many interesting things there. Railway travel is more com- 
fortable in India than elsewhere. From Bombay you can go four- 
teen hundred miles across to Calcutta, and eight hundred miles south- 
east to Madras, in comfortable trains. 

One pleasant trip I made was to Naral, a station about three 
hours from Bombay, where I mounted a pony and rode eight miles 
up the Ghauts to Matherran. I got there after dark, and drove to 
the Chowk Hotel, where I was hospitably entertained by the Eng- 
lish landlord, who, having no other guests, gave me comfortable 
apartments and good food. I rode out on horseback at sunrise next 
day, and saw from one of the points of the mountain the most 
charming landscape that I ever looked upon. Just below me, on a 
rock, sat an enormous monkey, her young grouped behind her and 
ready to scamper up a tree if I showed any hostile intentions. She 
looked at me as if to ask who I was and what I was doing there. It 
is one of the charms of travel in India that you meet with people 
whom you never met before, and with people who never heard of 
you! Go to India, by all means. 

At last Mr. Hyde learned that his friend and corre- 
spondent (who was one of the directors of the Equitable 
Society) had traveled so far as Cairo. Now he would 
entice the traveler to go farther east ; and writing to 
him, February ii, 1888, he said: 

I find that it was in the week before Christmas that I wrote to 
you, and if you knew what a busy place my office is when we are 
turning our steps into the highway of the new year, you will say that 
I have had reason to lay aside letter- writing for a while. 

I know that home letters are valuable to a traveler in strange 
lands ; and I remember being struck by some homesick words (I wish 
I could recall them) which are engraved in the stone lintel of the 
door of the Enghsh post-office at Hongkong, touching those who 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 129 

wait for news from a far country.^ If any pleasure or comfort can 
be carried to you by a letter from me, I am glad to stop the machinery 
of business for a while that I may write. 

A letter recently received from you tells me that you have gone 
no farther than Egypt. Yet when a traveler gets to Egypt there is 
no telling where next he may appear. It may be that some influence 
will yet carry you to the Suliman Mountains, as something started 
me, one Christmas morning, from Cairo to Suez and beyond. I 
remember that bright morning — to think of it now is a pleasure — 
when I and my companion got into a carriage standing in front of 
the hotel, and said to the driver, " Take us to the Suez train." Did 
we think of the children of Israel who began their wanderings in the 
same direction afoot? It was a resolute thing for us to do, and with 
the chance that Pharaoh, in the shape of homesickness, might pursue 
us. I remember to this day, while the train was running toward the 
Red Sea, white herons standing by the streams of Goshen looked at 
us; and camels yoked to wooden plows looked at us; and blue- 
gowned men sowing seed in the fields looked at us ; and two 
women grinding at a mill looked at us; and fellaheen making 
bricks with chopped straw looked at us; and naked boys selling 
unleavened bread looked at us; and the date-palms and orange- 
groves and sugar-canes of that fertile land looked at us. Then 
we came to the desert, and we had a gleam from the Bitter 
Lakes, and on the horizon we saw the outlines of a ship going 
through the great canal ; and then we reached Suez just as the new 
moon appeared with Jupiter in its crescent. 

The business of the Equitable — would you like to know about 
it? — has proved to be much larger than we had anticipated a year 
ago. There never has been anything like it ; and still the business 
is coming in more copiously than last year. We shall have our 
Annual Statement in print before this reaches you, but I don't believe 
you will want to sit down under the palm-trees before breakfast and 
read it. As to our new building, which is neither a Pyramid of 
Gizeh nor the Taj Mahal, but the greatest commercial edifice in the 
United States of North America, I can say that the workmen are 

^ "As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from 
a far country." — Prov. xxv. 25. 



I30 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



nearly out of it, and when the last man has gone we shall soon be 
quiet and in good order throughout the Equitable office. 

From Bombay Mr. Hyde journeyed to Allahabad. 
Here, mounted on an elephant loaned to him at the 
British cantonment, he visited the sacred festival of the 
Hindus at the point where the Jumna River flows into 
the Ganges. Then he traveled northward, tarrying at 
Cawnpore, Lucknow, Delhi, and so on to Umballa, 
whence he rode in a galloping mail-cart ninety-five 
miles up the mountains to Simla and the region of 
snows. This ride was done in ten hours, a fresh pair 
of ponies being taken at each five-mile station. Re- 
turning southward, he made a long stay at Agra to 
enjoy the delicate beauty of the Taj Mahal. From 
Agra he went to Benares, and there he took another 
ride on the back of an elephant. He spent some 
time at Calcutta ; thence, by way of Madras, he sailed 
to Ceylon. 

Writing, after his return home, to one who had enter- 
tained him in Bombay, he said : 

... I often think of the morning I spent at your delightful bun- 
galow on Malabar Hill. I sailed from Calcutta to Madras and 
Point de Galle, and have regretted that I did not stay longer in 
Ceylon. My visit was hurried, as we were tempted by the fine 
steamer Anadyr of the French Mail to hasten away after we had 
been ashore less than a week. I must go there again sometime and 
stay two or three months, for Ceylon appears to me to be the most 
beautiful part of the world that we visited. Perhaps it is more 
beautiful to a traveler than to any one else. 




THE EQUITABLE BUILDING 

Completed in i8S8 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 131 

From Ceylon Mr. Hyde sailed eastward, stopping at 
Singapore, Saigon, and Hongkong. From the latter 
city he went to Canton, and was entertained for a 
week at the dwelling-house of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas 
of London, on the island of Shamein in the river oppo- 
site the city, with which the island is connected by a 
bridge. After he reached home he wrote to his hosts 
a letter, dated September 30, 1879: 

My dear Mr. and Mrs. Thomas: After I left you I visited 
Shanghai, and then spent more than a month in Japan. We rode in 
jinrikishas from Kioto to Yokohama, three hundred and fifty miles 
in six days. We had a comfortable voyage of seventeen days from 
Yokohama to San Francisco. I reached home from my journey 
around the world in midsummer, but I confess that I have not yet 
lost the excitement of travel nor become entirely accustomed to the 
routine of business again. I suppose that time will finally convince 
me that I am no longer a traveler, and am not going to Canton any 
more ; although I shall resist such unwelcome convictions as long as 
possible. I have a great desire to return to China, and to ramble 
again through the shops of Canton, to lunch again in pagodas by 
candle-light, traverse the walls and narrow streets of that quaint city 
in our long line of chairs under guidance of Mac and the lanterns 
of Thomas and Mercer. I do not intend to give up the hope that I 
shall be able again to make a journey around the world. One has 
to go once to learn the way ; and one ought to go a second time to 
improve upon what has been learned. 

Mr. Hyde reached home in June, 1879. He had 
been traveling for nine months, and had become a new 
man in appearance and in reality. His health was now 
good, and his laugh was heartier than ever. In the 
December after his return, Mr. Julien T. Davies invited 



132 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



him to go to North CaroHna on a *' fishing-trip." His 
reply was : 

My dear Julien : If you would propose something like a run to 
Calcutta, I am on hand. But these little spurts into the provinces 
for a day or two! Why, my dear fellow, you and I are worthy of 
nobler game. What do you say to a fishing and shooting excursion 
to Australia, December 31, Grand Central Depot, Pacific Express 
train, 6 p.m.? Think of it, my dear fellow, and tell me if you will 
be there. 

In January, 1880, Mr. Hyde wrote to one in London 
who had been a fellow-passenger across the Pacific 
Ocean : 

... I look back upon my journey as a delightful dream. After 
all, it is not such a great distance around the world. We start off 
with the thought that the journey is a tremendous undertaking, and 
perhaps it is ; but it is so easily accomplished that, in the retrospect, 
it does not seem to be much of an affair. 

And in the same year he wrote to a business asso- 
ciate who was traveling in the East: ''I was glad to 
hear that you had reached India on your way to China, 
and that you were enjoying the Taj. You are on a 
pleasant journey. My visit to India gave me much 
satisfaction, and, in addition to my improved health, I 
find myself almost daily reviewing the interesting scenes 
through which I passed." 



CHAPTER XVIII 



PERSONAL CHARM 



There were two sides to Mr. Hyde: one, that of 
the man of business; the other, the man away from 
business. In the former the whole commercial com- 
munity knew him as the incarnation of labor ; in the 
latter, few but his intimates knew him. He confined 
his public life to the Society. It pleased him to say 
that but a few of those who had a knowledge of his 
achievements recognized him on the street. From his 
earliest days he deprecated show and ostentation, and 
at all times he was simple in his tastes. When away 
from the office and its cares of management, he exhib- 
ited a charm of manner and an attractiveness that were 
alluring and winsome. Secretary Alexander says: 
" Those who knew him only when he was in New York, 
when the cares of office pressed upon his thoughts, knew 
him very imperfectly. To understand the breadth and 
depth of his character it was necessary to be with him 
at times when, having resigned to his associates the 
responsibility of conducting the business, he was able 

133 



134 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



to throw care to the winds, and went far afield for rest 
and recreation. It was my privilege in those early- 
days to accompany him on many such excursions, and 
I have never known a more genial, entertaining, con- 
siderate, and instructive traveling companion than he. 
He was a man who could never be idle. His active 
mind was necessarily always on the alert ; and the 
movement and change of travel, the interest of seeing 
new places and new people, made it to him the best and 
most enjoyable form of relaxation. His conversations 
at such times about men and things and books and 
philosophy and art, about statesmanship and history 
and the conflicts of nations, were never commonplace, 
but always intensely interesting and instructive. At 
such times his reminiscences of his business experi- 
ences, as well as of his projects for the future, were 
eminently instructive and inspiring, and were given 
with an open frankness which was full of charm." 

Mr. Hyde was a good man to travel with. He 
was ready to rough it when necessary, but when on a 
journey he always made himself and his companions 
as comfortable as circumstances would permit — and 
circumstances were usually forced to permit. He pre- 
ferred plain, nourishing food, and always got the best 
there was to be had. When he arrived at an out-of- 
the-way place, if there was any doubt about the re- 
sources of the local hotel, he would forage about the 
town, visit the market, look into the principal shops, 



*^ 0m 



.«i^| 




AT SIXTY YEARS OF AGE 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 135 

lay in a dozen or two of new-laid eggs, and finally 
coerce the leading butcher into selling him a thick 
steak from his best roast of beef. If there were 
oysters to be had (and he was exceedingly fond of 
them), he would select the largest and best in the 
market, and order them sent forthwith to the hotel at 
which he was stopping. 

Mr. Hyde was an industrious reader ; he possessed 
a keen love of knowledge, and found genuine pleasure 
and diversion in books. Although on all subjects of 
public and political interest he formed strong impres- 
sions, he was loath to put forward his views, except to 
those immediately surrounding him. His conversa- 
tion was interesting and instructive, and particularly 
so when he spoke of the history, people, and products 
of other lands. Although by disposition he was natu- 
rally sociable, fond of anecdotes and illustrative stories, 
his life was passed in a somewhat confined path by 
reason of his devotion to the great enterprise in which 
his life was spent. 

" I always found," said Mr. James W. Alexander, 
*' Mr. Hyde a kind and indulgent friend to all who 
were faithful and diligent ; but he was hard and inex- 
orable toward the unfaithful and lazy. No man could 
ever hold his friendship and support who was not 
efficient and honest. He judged men by the results 
of their work, and not by their good intentions. He 
had not the habit of resorting to many resources out- 



136 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

side of the Equitable Society for pleasure. It was 
undoubtedly one of the reasons for his great success 
that he was a man of one idea. ' This one thing I do,' 
was a favorite motto of his. It was the Equitable So- 
ciety morning, noon, and night, day in and day out. 
When he went home, or walked or rode for exercise, 
he was apt to engage in reflection about what mea- 
sures could be taken to benefit the Equitable Society ; 
and it was undoubtedly one of the causes which brought 
his life to an earlier end than would otherwise have 
been the case, that he permitted himself so little diver- 
sion and change of thought." 

**One morning," says Secretary Alexander, "not 
many years before his death, on a legal holiday when 
the office was closed, Mr. Hyde summoned me to his 
house in Fortieth Street to go over the proof of an 
advertisement prepared for insertion in several of the 
principal monthly magazines. Up to that time the 
Society had not advertised in the magazines, and 
the venture was something of an experiment. On my 
arrival, he hastily gathered up the proofs and hurried 
with me from the house, explaining that his wife had 
urged him to leave his business down-town ; that he 
had promised to be good, and that he did not wish it 
to be known that he was misbehaving. 

"As soon as we had effected our escape, it was 
obvious that no thought had been given to our place 
of retreat ; so, figuratively speaking, after circling once 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 137 

or twice we lighted in the smoking-room of the Murray 
Hill Hotel, on Park Avenue. Here, in a small room, 
overheated, with no ventilation, crowded with men 
who were smoking as they read their morning papers, 
we whispered for an hour or two. We had not taken 
off our overcoats, nor had we removed our hats. As 
for me, I was in a fever ; my head swam, and I gasped 
for breath ; but his intellectual powers were concen- 
trated upon the advertisement, and he was oblivious to 
his surroundings. 

** Although I now have a very dim recollection of 
the language or form of the advertisement, I have a 
vivid remembrance of the fact that he strengthened 
and improved it, and gave it a life and force and vivid 
character which it had lacked. It is fair to explain 
that if he had known in advance that so much time was 
to be occupied in the correction of this proof he would 
have engaged a private room where the business could 
have been attended to in a comfortable way; but at the 
start the advertisement was supposed to be satisfac- 
tory, Mr. Hyde had already approved it in the manu- 
script, and he believed that he only wished to pass 
upon its appearance and satisfy himself of its accu- 
racy. The order to print had been given; indeed, one 
of the magazines was to go to press early the next 
morning. But Mr. Hyde's imagination had been 
working through the night, and he saw clearly that 
there was still room for improvement ; and where there 



138 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

was room for improvement he never failed to improve. 
Finally, after the proof had been covered all over with 
amendments and additions, I was sent down to Park 
Row to the office of the advertising agent who had 
the mechanical part of the work in charge. Notwith- 
standing the fact that it was a holiday, the nature of 
this agent's work made it necessary for him to be at 
his post, and the result was that, although Mr. Hyde 
lost half his holiday, and although he went home 
wearied in mind and body, he had the satisfaction of 
seeing the advertisement in the various magazines 
precisely as he wished it to appear." 

At first blush it may seem a waste of time to dwell 
upon so trifling an incident as this, but it is for this 
very reason that it has been selected. Nothing about 
the Equitable was trivial to Mr. Hyde. Most presi- 
dents would have left such details to the advertising 
agent, but not so with him. He was as solicitous 
about the form of every advertisement as a lapidary is 
about the cutting of a diamond. In the same way, 
every prospectus issued by the Society was either 
written by him or carefully revised by him. The 
books and pamphlets published from time to time 
were usually prepared in the first instance by some one 
else ; if not satisfied with the first draft, he would 
sometimes throw the whole composition aside, and 
dictate to a shorthand writer something absolutely 
new and original, perhaps utilizing the best of the 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 139 

material originally prepared. It is not surprising 
that he carefully scrutinized every item of the So- 
ciety's Annual Statement as it was developed, for 
an annual statement illustrates the character of the 
management of each company issuing it, and reveals 
its progress for the year ; but it is significant that he 
gave as much attention to the typographical appear- 
ance of the Statement, when set up as an advertise- 
ment for insertion in the papers, as he gave to its 
details. 



CHAPTER XIX 



THE END 



In the spring of 1898 Mr. Hyde was seized with 
an attack of inflammatory rheumatism, from which 
he rallied, but which left his heart in an enfeebled 
condition. He deemed it prudent, therefore, to aban- 
don altogether, for the time being, the cares and 
responsibilities of business, with the hope and expec- 
tation of a complete restoration to health. For a 
year he enjoyed absolute rest, Vice-President Alex- 
ander serving during the whole of that period as act- 
ing president of the Society. Mr. Hyde spent the 
summer of 1898 in Saratoga, and returned in the 
autumn greatly strengthened and refreshed. His 
mind was clear ; his intellectual faculties retained all 
their marvelous freshness and alertness. He expressed 
the liveliest interest in the successful progress of the 
Society, and looked forward with great interest to 
the approaching anniversary, knowing that the So- 
ciety had already on its books one thousand million 
dollars of assurance in force. He looked forward 

140 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 141 

with pleasant anticipation to the coming event which 
would so grandly commemorate his life's work. His 
friends looked forward with renewed hope to his com- 
plete restoration to health ; but this was not to be. 
The sands were running in Time's hour-glass ; and 
the heart, worn by years of incessant toil, gave indica- 
tions of his approaching end. As the winter of 1 898- 
1899 drew to a close, he suffered a relapse, and on 
May 2, 1899, Henry Baldwin Hyde passed quietly 
and peacefully away, surrounded by his family. 

It is not to be supposed that he had so builded the 
Equitable Society that it rested on his energy alone, 
or that it was as a ship without a navigator when 
inclination or necessity occasioned his absence. In- 
deed, it will be remembered that in 1884 he said: " Per- 
sons have very often said to me, ' The Society stands 
very well now, but you may drop off some day ; what 
then ? ' . . . I believe this company is well officered, . . . 
and I feel that in Vice-President James W. Alexander 
you have a gentleman who at any time is fully quali- 
fied to take the presidency of the Society." 

In his son, James H. Hyde, he foresaw the length- 
ening out of his own life after his days of work were 
ended. He had trained him in the theory and practice 
of life assurance, and carefully prepared him for the 
office of second vice-president of the Society, to which 
position, after his graduation from Harvard Univer- 
sity, his father had the pleasure of seeing him elected, 



142 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

by the Board of Directors, on November 2, li 
and in 1899, after his father's death, he was elected 
vice-president. 

The news of the death of Henry B. Hyde produced 
a profound impression upon the financial, industrial, 
and social worlds. Flags on the buildings of all 
life assurance companies and fiduciary institutions 
were placed at half-mast. The entrance to the Equi- 
table Building was draped with black crape, and other 
institutions paid a similar tribute to his memory. 

On Friday morning, May 5, 1899, a simple but 
impressive funeral service was held in New York, 
at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, corner of 
Fifth Avenue and Fifty-fifth Street. The assembly 
that filled the church included a large number of 
distinguished persons, the Board of Directors, repre- 
sentatives of the domestic and foreign agents of the 
Equitable Society, and upwards of three hundred of the 
Society's clerks. The Rev. Henry van Dyke, D.D., 
officiated. The pall-bearers were James W. Alexander, 
John Sloane, Senator Depew, General Louis Fitz- 
gerald, William A. Wheelock, Marcellus Hartley, 
President Richard A. McCurdy of the Mutual Life, 
and President John A. McCall of the New York Life. 

At Woodlawn Cemetery the Rev. Dr. Ralph L. 
Brydges of Islip, an old friend of Mr. Hyde's family, 
read the service committing the body to the grave. 



CHAPTER XX 



PUBLIC RECOGNITION 



A SPECIAL meeting of the Board of Directors of the 
Equitable Society was held May lo, 1899. At that 
meeting the following minute, submitted by the Hon. 
Chauncey M. Depew, was unanimously adopted : 

RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED BY THE DIRECTORS OF THE 
EQUITABLE SOCIETY 

We mourn the loss of the founder of the Equitable 
Life Assurance Society. We are thankful that he 
lived to enjoy its marvelous success. He laid its 
foundation and was both its architect and builder. 
He entered the field with many competitors. Most 
of them failed or retired from business. In the race 
for strength, influence, world-wide connections, sol- 
vency, and beneficence, Mr. Hyde put this company 
in the front rank among those which survived. The 
history of the Society is the story of his life. He 
effaced himself for the institution he loved so dearly 
and served so faithfully. The same intuition, skill, 
and energy devoted to his private affairs would have 

143 



144 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



given him position among the few superlatively rich 
men of the world. The interests of the Equitable 
were always of infinitely greater care with him than 
his private business. He deliberately chose to fos- 
ter, expand, and strengthen the Equitable rather 
than make or leave a large fortune for his family. 
He was in a high sense a philanthropist and bene- 
factor. His company during its forty years of exis- 
tence has paid to those who trusted to it their savings 
for the safety of their families $307,000,000, and 
it holds $265,000,000 for its many policy-holders. 
This unparalleled result was the work of Henry B. 
Hyde. No fortune of $200,000,000 was ever piled 
up in a single life. But our president, from the age 
of twenty-five to sixty-five, accumulated for the So- 
ciety $572,000,000. This sum not only far exceeds 
the greatest fortune of the most famous financiers, 
but is $275,000,000 more than any other life com- 
pany has gathered within the corresponding period 
of its history. 

Mr. Hyde was both conservative and adventurous. 
He formed his plans with patience and care. He 
provided for every possible contingency within the 
ken of human foresight. Like every conqueror, he 
never doubted nor turned back. He moved upon 
the lines laid out with such speed and boldness as 
often to alarm his friends and associates. But the 
plans which might have failed in weaker hands 
materialized as they had been arranged by this mas- 
terful genius. His quickness in grasping a situation 
and his resourcefulness in meeting it were invaluable 
in time of panic and financial revulsions, of which so 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 145 

many and such disastrous ones happened during his 
career. Other companies might be crippled or go 
under, but the Equitable always came out the richer. 
He possessed the faculty of great leadership, the abil- 
ity to select the best men for his cabinet and as cap- 
tains. His judgment was faultless in choosing those 
who must be entrusted with great responsibilities. 
He was merciless to failure, but generous to extrava- 
gance in recognition of signal services. He bound 
able men to him and his company by a personal 
loyalty and devotion which won from them far more 
energetic and concentrated effort than money could 
buy. Though in the prime of life and powers, and 
with a future as full of possibilities as his past when 
he died, yet he was already the foremost man of his 
profession, and the creator of the most remarkably 
successful financial institution in the world. 

Those of us who knew him longest and best 
appreciated better than any others, by reason of 
this closer contact, his genius, his executive ability, 
and his fidelity to this trust. But with our admira- 
tion for the officer and administrator grew a pro- 
found respect and tender love for the man. A 
bigger heart and sweeter nature never existed 
with such conquering qualities of mind. Broad 
in intellect, generous in his friendships, public- 
spirited as a citizen, a model father, husband, and 
son, the world has seldom held a nobler man than 
Henry B. Hyde. 

At the meeting at which the foregoing minute was 
adopted Mr. James W. Alexander was elected presi- 



146 HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 

dent of the Society, and Mr. James H. Hyde was 
elected vice-president. 

The general agents resident in New York city, con- 
stituting the *' Metropolitan Department" of the So- 
ciety, held a meeting and adopted resolutions, from 
which the following paragraphs are quoted: 

RESOLUTIONS OF THE AGENTS IN NEW YORK CITY 

While we pause to pay this slight tribute to the 
memory of our great president, his unequaled ability 
in the profession of life assurance, his indomitable 
energy, his master mind that conceived the true 
reforms that have been engrafted in the business, 
we cannot fail to record his uniform kindness, con- 
sideration, and loyal support of every faithful and 
upright manager, general agent, and agent, who 
have in all the forty years of the history of the 
Equitable Society been privileged to serve its inter- 
ests. Surely if he now could speak to us, his mes- 
sage would be to each and every representative of 
the Society: ''Faithfully, loyally, honorably, and 
energetically continue to serve the interests of the 
Equitable, and thereby you will best honor my 
memory." 

To our vice-president, James H. Hyde, Esq., 
we express our special sympathy and conviction 
that the mantle of his honored father, as a suc- 
cessful life insurance officer, will rest gracefully on 
his shoulders. 



A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 147 

The following are extracts from resolutions passed 
at a meeting of the great body of the general agents 
of the Society, outside of the '' Metropolitan District" : 

We need not refer to the masterly ability of Henry B. 
Hyde, for the Equitable Society stands a living 
monument to his memory. The millions of people 
who are interested in life assurance must acknow- 
ledge the debt due to his skill and sagacity. 

It is fitting, however, that we should record some 
sense of the loss we have sustained by the death of 
one who justly earned the name of friend of the 
agents, and who always strove for their success. 
His ripe experience and constant helpfulness in our 
ranks proved his claim to the title. Recognized as 
the most eminent of life assurance workers, he al- 
ways kept in touch with us, even in our most remote 
fields of labor. Carrying, in heart and mind, the 
responsibilities attached to his exalted position, 
allowing no detail of management to escape his 
notice, he was continually visiting, counseling, en- 
couraging, and inspiring us. His personal magnet- 
ism, precept, and example have spurred many a dis- 
heartened agent to success. 



At the time of Mr. Hyde's death only six of the ori- 
ginal members of the Board of Directors remained, 
namely, Dr. Edward W. Lambert, Henry M.Alexander, 



148 



HENRY BALDWIN HYDE 



Henry G. Marquand, Alanson Trask, J. F. de Navarro, 
and Thomas S. Young. The following is a list of the 
present Board: 



James W. Alexander, 
Louis Fitzgerald, 
Chauncey M. Depew, 
Wm. a. Wheelock, 
Marcellus Hartley, 
Henry G. Marquand, 
Cornelius N. Bliss, 
George H. Squire, 
Thomas D. Jordan, 
Charles S. Smith, 
Edward W. Lambert, 
Wm. Alexander, 
John J. McCook, 
Alanson Trask, 
C. Ledyard Blair, 
Brayton Ives, 
Melville E. Ingalls, 



James H. Hyde, 
John A. Stewart, 
Jacob H. Schiff, 
A. J. Cassatt, 
T. Jefferson Coolidge, 
John Jacob Astor, 
Sir Wm. C. Van Horne, 
Gage E. Tarbell, 
Marvin Hughitt, 
Henry C. Frick, 
C. B. Alexander, 
T. De Witt Cuyler, 
E. H. Harriman, 
Sidney D. Ripley, 
Geo. W. Carleton, 
J. F. de Navarro, 
Thomas S. Young, 



Levi P. Morton, 
August Belmont, 
Wm. a. Tower, 
D. O. Mills, 
Robt. T. Lincoln, 
Geo. J. Gould, 
John Sloane, 
Geo. T. Wilson, 
Thomas T. Eckert, 
H. M. Alexander, 
Samuel M. Inman, 
H. C. Haarstick, 
Wm. H. McIntyre, 
David H. Moffat, 
V. P. Snyder, 
Wm. H. Baldwin, Jr., 
Joseph T. Low. 



APPENDIX 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Reminiscences of the Presidents of the Companies 
named below : 

The Equitable Life Assurance Society 153 

The Mutual Life Insurance Company 162 

The New York Life Insurance Company 164 

The Travelers' Insurance Company .166 

The Metropohtan Life Insurance Company 168 

Reminiscences of Dr. Edward W. Lambert, a member of 
the original Board of Directors, and chief of the medical 
staff of the Society 174 

Reminiscences of the Oldest Living Members of the 
Society's Office Force: 
James B. Loring, the first clerk employed in the office, now 

registrar of the Society 176 

Thomas D. Jordan, the second clerk employed in the office, 

now controller of the Society 176 

Thomas H. Cuming, charged originally with the custody of 

the policy records 177 

F. H. Fenning, of the policy department 178 

Alfred W. Maine, associate auditor of the Society . . .178 
Francis W. Jackson, the first bookkeeper, now auditor of 

the Society .,....,. 180 

151 



152 CONTENTS 

PAGE. 

William H. Bridgman, formerly an agent, now identified 
with the office force i8i 

WiUiam Root Bliss, the friend who accompanied Mr. Hyde 
on his journey round the world, and still a member of the 
office force 185. 

Reminiscences of the Oldest Living Agents of the Equi- 
table Society 191 

Reminiscences of Charles C. Bombaugh, Insurance Jour- 
nalist 200 

Reminiscences of Charles D. Lakey, Insurance JournaUst . 202 

Resolutions of Corporations and other Bodies, in 
Reference to Mr. Hyde's Death 204. 

Hints and Maxims from Mr. Hyde's Circulars to 
Agents OF the Equitable Society 213, 

Mr. Hyde's Life-Work: Forty Years' Record of the 
Equitable Society 235 

Unveiling of J. Q. A. Ward's Portrait Statue of Mr. 
Hyde 238. 



PRESIDENT ALEXANDER'S REMINISCENCES 

I FIRST made the acquaintance of Mr. Henry B. Hyde when I 
was a boy in New York. He was a member of the church at 
the corner of Nineteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, of which 
my father was the pastor. It was then the most important 
Presbyterian church in New York, and in the congregation 
were many of the most influential merchants and bankers in 
the city. 

I remember Mr. Hyde very well in those days as being a 
young, slim, active man, very earnest and assiduous in the 
work of the Young Men's Christian Association and other 
similar useful enterprises. 

At about the time I was finishing my junior year at col- 
lege, Mr. Hyde was actively engaged in launching his new 
enterprise, the Equitable Life. My father took a very warm 
interest in his undertaking, and the first Board of Direc- 
tors of the Equitable was very largely composed of strong 
men in my father's congregation. 

I heard a great deal about the preliminary work of estab- 
lishing the Equitable, which was organized July 26, 1859, 
during the vacation before I became a senior at college. 
Owing to my intimacy with Mr. Hyde, and the fact that my 
uncle Mr. William C. Alexander was chosen to be the 
first president of the company, I kept very closely in touch 
with Mr. Hyde and his work. 

After graduation from college in i860, I studied law in 
New York, became a practitioner, and continued active in the 

153 



154 APPENDIX 

profession until 1866, when I was elected secretary of the 
Equitable. I mention this fact merely as showing when my 
organic connection with the company began, and to explain 
that during the interval from July, 1859, until the 13th of 
August, 1866, my intercourse with Mr. Hyde was that of a 
friend and not that of an associate officer. I saw a great deal of 
him, and a friendship was formed which continued unbroken and 
constantly increasing in firmness until Mr. Hyde's death in 1899. 

Mr. Hyde, during part of this early interval, lived in East 
Twenty-sixth Street, and for a short portion of that time I, 
being a bachelor in New York, without family connections 
living there, became a fellow-occupant of the same house. 
He was working at that time night and day, and had 
nothing on his mind but the Equitable, unless I make the 
exception that he became engaged to be married during 
that period, and was married to Miss Annie Fitch in March, 
1864, I being one of his groomsmen on that occasion. The 
fashion in those days was not, as it is now, to have a best 
man and ushers, but simply to have groomsmen equal in 
number to the bridesmaids who waited upon the bride. 

Nothing can obliterate the impression made upon me as a 
young man, after joining the Equitable, of the tremendous 
vigor and industry of Mr. Hyde. His mind was perhaps the 
most active which I have ever observed. I remember often 
having heard the first president of the company say that Mr. 
Hyde had a more suggestive mind than anybody he had ever 
met. He always took great pains to be sure he was right in a 
certain course, and then it seemed as if nothing could stand 
in his way. Neither friendships nor obstacles nor precedents 
nor anything else kept him from accomplishing his pur- 
poses. Naturally, a man like this sometimes trod on other 
people's toes, but it was always with him the Equitable 
first and personal friendships afterwards. He had a feel- 
ing about it very much as if it was a sentient being, and 
was ready to make any sacrifice in its behalf. Instead of 



APPENDIX 155 

being, as many people imagine all corporate officers to be, one 
who was disposed to use the institution for his own benefit, there 
have been many instances which have come under my personal 
observation when Mr. Hyde has risked his entire fortune for 
the benefit of the concern which occupied so large a place in 
his heart, and I do not exaggerate, I am sure, when I say that 
he would have submitted to impoverishment rather than see 
disaster come to the Equitable. 

In those early days the situation was of course absolutely 
different from what it is now, with a tremendous accumulation 
of money and a growing surplus, and a good name and fame 
reaching all over the world; and wise guidance has become 
of more importance than intrepid work and constructive skill. 
It must be remembered that in the early days of the Equita- 
ble it was a pygmy among companies which were, by com- 
parison, giants. The Connecticut Mutual was at that date 
considered one of the greatest companies, and had an exalted 
position among its fellows. In New York the Mutual Life 
stood at the head, and Mr. Frederick S. Winston was the 
able president who administered its affairs. 

There was more or less friction between the Mutual Life 
and the Equitable, because Mr. Winston, a conservative man- 
ager of a well-established company, looked with some sus- 
picion on what he considered the audacious aggressiveness of 
Mr. Hyde and his young company; but this friction all 
passed away before the death of Mr. Winston, and there was 
always an underlying friendship between these two men, 
which mellowed into a most admirable relation in Mr. Win- 
ston's later years. 

It is worthy of note that, with all the ambition, zeal, 
pressure, and even innovations, Mr. Hyde never for one 
instant allowed himself, or those under his direction, to 
swerve one hair's-breadth from those great principles which 
are the fundamental basis of our scientific business. 

For example, he insisted from the start that the business 



156 APPENDIX 

should be transacted on a cash basis. In those days a large 
number of companies took from policy-holders a portion of 
the premium, say forty or fifty per cent., in a promissory note. 
This note was a charge against the policy, and it was gener- 
ally represented by agents for those companies that the divi- 
dends would offset the notes. But as interest was charged 
up against the notes, and the dividends did not amount to 
enough to offset them, great dissatisfaction among policy- 
holders ensued, and sacrifices and lapses and disorganization 
were the result. 

Before these chickens came home to roost, Mr. Hyde saw 
the folly of the plan, and insisted on the business of the 
Equitable being transacted in cash, in spite of the fact that 
for a new company, commencing business in the face of so 
many obstacles and against such odds, a much greater busi- 
ness could have been done on the note plan. 

It is a great tribute to his wise foresight that many of the 
companies which in those days did business on the note plan 
abandoned it afterwards. 

Another principle which Mr. Hyde insisted on from the 
start was that of absolute mutuality. The insurance laws of 
New York, which had been passed a short time before the 
organization of the Equitable, required all new companies to 
have a capital of $100,000. If it had not been for this re- 
quirement, Mr. Hyde would have organized the Equitable 
without capital. He was forced by the law (as all other com- 
panies have been since 1853) to have a capital, and he had 
it made as small as the law would permit, namely, $100,000, 
and insisted that the charter should be so drawn that the 
holders of the stock could never receive dividends greater 
than the legal interest then recognized by the laws of the 
State of New York, and the capital was so invested that this 
interest was earned by it, therefore leaving the entire profits 
of the Society to go to the policy-holders, and the policy- 
holders alone, for all time. 



APPENDIX , 157 

At a certain meeting which occurred of the incorporators 
of the Equitable, some of those present proposed that the 
dividend on the stock should be made greater than the legal 
interest, if more was earned. This seemed a popular propo- 
sition to some of those about to form the company, but at the 
close of the discussion Mr. Hyde rose and said : " Gentle- 
men, I have made up my mind that this company shall be a 
purely mutual company, and if this provision limiting the 
dividends for all time on the stock to legal interest isn't put 
into the charter, I will take my hat and walk out of this room 
and have nothing further to do with the enterprise " ; where- 
upon the charter was so framed that no one but the policy- 
holders should ever participate in the profits of the company. 

This incident in the early history of the company is par- 
ticularly interesting in these times, when evil-disposed or 
ignorant persons have undertaken to intimate that, because 
the Society has a capital, its mutuality, so far as the policy- 
holders is concerned, is subject to question. 

It might have been thought natural that a man building up 
a new enterprise in life assurance would have been disposed 
to be lenient in regard to the acceptance of risks. Not so 
Mr. Hyde. From the very beginning, and all through the 
history of the Equitable, Mr. Hyde's tremendous influence 
had been brought to bear on the medical officers and exami- 
ners of the Society rigidly to reject doubtful risks, and to give 
the Society always the benefit of the doubt. No instance in 
the whole history of the Society can be adduced in which Mr. 
Hyde ever tried to get the medical directors to pass a risk 
about which there had been any question; on the contrary, 
they have constantly been under a pressure from him to 
reject in all such cases. 

Mr. Hyde always set his face against methods which had 
the effect of mortgaging the policy-holders' indemnity, or 
making it easy for them to withdraw from the company. 
His view was that the object of a life assurance company was 



158 APPENDIX 

to take care of the widows and orphans of those assured, and 
he was dead set against the devices which have crept into the 
business through competition in late years, by which poHcy- 
holders are tempted to leave their famiHes unprotected, and 
against big surrender values in the earHer stages of the as- 
surance, which operate to make policy-holders throw up 
their assurance, under slight temptation, at the expense of 
their families. 

Mr. Hyde also saw, away back in the early years of the 
company, the value of strength, and the whole force of his 
management was directed toward the accumulation of surplus, 
not only as a protection, but as a reservoir of profits; and 
nothing could be more emphatic than the justification which 
events recently and now occurring have given to this policy 
wisely adopted by him in years past. The accumulation of 
the Equitable's large surplus makes it absolutely proof against 
the dangers confronting many companies arising out of the 
fall in interest on good investments, and therefore the Equita- 
ble finds itself to-day able to change its reserve at any mo- 
ment from a four per cent, basis — the standard of the State 
of New York — to a three per cent, basis — the standard which 
will most probably be adopted before many years — without 
the sHghtest shock, damage, or embarrassment. 

I remember many things that Mr. Hyde did in the early 
years of the company which illustrated his hard business 
sense and determination. When he saw that a thing had to 
be done he generally made up his mind to do it, no matter 
what the obstacles. An instance, of no great importance in 
itself, will illustrate what I mean : 

The Equitable formerly had its offices at No. 92 Broadway. 
As its business increased it became necessary to take offices 
in the adjoining building. For the convenience of adminis- 
tration it was desirable to connect these two buildings by an 
opening. But there were two different landlords, and one of 
them was of such a temperament that Mr. Hyde had some 



APPENDIX 159 

misgivings as to whether he could obtain consent to make an 
opening in the wall between the two structures. He cut the 
Gordian knot by bringing in masons and making the open- 
ing first, and then negotiating afterwards. Of course, techni- 
cally and legally, the act was a trespass, but the entrance 
once made, Mr. Hyde found it quite easy to obtain the legal 
consent, which was given. 

I attribute a great deal of what business capacity I have to 
the example and counsels of Mr. Hyde through many years. 
Very early in my official career he urged upon me the prin- 
ciple that I should never do myself what I could get some 
other man to do as well. The object of this was to econo- 
mize time for matters of the greatest importance. That 
thought has been useful to me all my life, and it is one of the 
elements of executive ability. 

A favorite motto of his in advising with me about accom- 
pHshing ends was, *' A step each day." In the conduct of 
large affairs, with embarrassing and complicated questions 
constantly arising, the temptation frequently presents itself to 
postpone and defer. Mr. Hyde's promptitude was one of his 
best points. When important things were to be done, he did 
them like lightning, and exacted the same sort of readiness 
on the part of his assistants. Any man who will adopt this 
principle and put it into practice will accomplish many times 
the work of one who doesn't bear it in mind. 

The remarkable system by which the officers of the Equita- 
ble keep daily check on every department of its affairs, and 
know precisely what is going on, by means of statistical re- 
ports from the various departments, was invented by Mr. 
Hyde and put into operation, and it is now of the greatest 
possible value and requires little amendment. Whoever is at 
the head of the Equitable is able, by means of this machinery, 
every day, to know exactly how faithfully each man in the 
office and in the field is performing his duties, and how the 
results in all departments stand, and thereby to criticize, 



i6o APPENDIX 

change, develop, and otherwise handle the details of the busi- 
ness so as to correct faults and make improvements, and all 
this with very slight loss of trouble or time. 

I always found Mr. Hyde a kind and indulgent friend to all 
who were faithful and diligent, but he was hard and inexora- 
ble toward the unfaithful and lazy. No man ever could hold 
his friendship and support who was not efficient and honest. 
He judged men by the results of their work, and not by their 
good intentions. 

In the old days, when the time of the chief officers was not 
so much taken up with administrative work as at present, it 
was one of Mr. Hyde's favorite methods of improving the 
business to get all the general agents and managers in the 
country together in New York for conventions of several days' 
duration. During these sessions they told one another their 
methods of succeeding in canvassing, and Mr. Hyde would 
supplement them with his own experience. These conven- 
tions were of vast use in those days, and always wound up 
with a feast at which the loyalty and Equitable spirit of the 
men were excited to the highest pitch. 

When the Equitable started, Mr. Hyde took off his coat 
and went into the field with Dr. Edward W. Lambert, who 
was then, as he is now, chief medical examiner of the 
company, and canvassed for risks himself, and almost up to 
the last of his life he was ready, when an agent found it im- 
possible to close with an applicant, to put on his hat and go 
out and help him to do it, and the instance was rare when he 
did not succeed. 

His personality in intercourse with business men was 
magnetic. He had an eye like an eagle's, and when he 
talked to the man opposite to him, he looked him through 
and through, and it was only here and there that the person 
to whom he addressed himself was not brought absolutely 
within the power of his influence. Mr. Hyde always claimed 
that one of the chief elements of success in an agent was the 



APPENDIX i6i 

ability to enforce his will on the mind of the man with whom 
he was dealing. 

Mr. Hyde had not the habit of resorting to many re- 
sources outside of the Equitable for pleasure. It was un- 
doubtedly one of the reasons for his great success that he was 
a man of one idea. '' This one thing I do," was a favorite motto 
of his. It was the Equitable, morning, noon, and night, day in 
and day out. When he went home, or walked or rode for exer- 
cise, he was apt to engage in reflection about what measures 
could be taken to benefit the Equitable, and it undoubtedly 
was one of the causes which brought his life to an earlier end 
than would otherwise have been the case, that he permitted 
himself so little diversion and change of thought. 

He always had a sort of contempt for those connected with 
the company who gave a portion of their attention outside of 
business hours to other things than the Equitable's business. 
Whether this was or was not a mistake so far as his own life 
and longevity were concerned, there was no question but that 
the Equitable got the benefit of it. 

As I look at the organization of the Society to-day, and 
see the many men who have grown up from the lowest posi- 
tions in the office into the highest, and having been all 
through these years directly and indirectly under the in- 
fluence of Mr. Hyde's strong character, I can see, even now 
that he is gone, that there pervades the administration of the 
Society's affairs a spirit and a habit which are unique in their 
excellence, and this spirit and this habit are sure to be per- 
petuated, and will give a real strength to the conduct of the 
Equitable's affairs, which I may be forgiven for thinking does 
not exist in quite the same sense in other quarters. 

James W. Alexander. 



PRESIDENT McCURDY'S TRIBUTE 

The first general agent of the Mutual to achieve a national 
reputation in spreading the principles of mutual insurance was 
Henry H. Hyde of Boston. His son, trained as a clerk in the 
Mutual office, showed at an early age an originality and 
energy which could not long be satisfied in a subordinate po- 
sition, and in 1859 he founded the Equitable Life Assurance 
Society of the United States, gathering to his support a large 
body of associates of high moral, intellectual, and financial 
resources. 

This company, in the short space of less than forty years, and 
while its founder is still at its head,^ has become one of the 
noblest monuments of wisdom, perseverance, and permanent 
usefulness which modern civilization possesses. To the phos- 
phorescent genius of Henry Baldwin Hyde is due not only its 
conception, not only the unremitting, intelligent, and impul- 
sive labor with which it was established, but the constant 
supervision of its affairs throughout its history. 

Always surprising by the novelty of his methods, and in- 
domitable in the vigor and mastery with which they were 
prosecuted, his influence has been felt upon the business at 
large in a degree second to none, and the vast changes which 
its entire organization and management have undergone dur- 

iThis was written during Mr. of the New York "Independent," 
Hyde's lifetime. It was published under the heading, "Life Insurance 
in the fiftieth anniversary number Fifty Years Ago." 

162 



APPENDIX 163 

ing the last generation have resulted, in a degree which few 
as yet appreciate, from innovations made by him. 

From age to age some soul divinely great 
Mounts o'er the level of our poor estate ; 
And mindless of the confluent tides that gave 
Its grand preeminence to that crowning wave, 
We mark its period, and redate old time 
By the accession of that force sublime. 

Richard A. McCurdy. 



PRESIDENT McCALL'S TRIBUTE ^ 

A GREAT insurance leader has fallen. Henry B. Hyde is 
dead. By the standards used in judging men in this life, he 
was without a peer in the profession which he honored by 
his unsurpassed abiHty. But he may not be measured 
by the standards that we apply to the average business man, 
because of his unquestioned superiority. He was rapid in 
thought and action, brilliant in conception of plans, and 
masterly in carrying them to successful completion. The 
great loss to the insurance profession of a genius like this 
great chieftain may not find proper expression here. In 
any tribute paid him, words must fail to describe correctly 
his impulsiveness, his intolerance of mediocrity, and the over- 
powering aggressiveness of the man in the severe contests he 
invited and waged. Their description does not belong to 
this hour, nor can we now depict the quieter moods when 
restfulness held sway and gentler thoughts found voice in 
generous and impartial tributes to friend and foe alike, in- 
dicating the manliness of one who was a giant both in 
intellect and in action. In the organization and upbuilding 
of one of the greatest of the world's beneficent institutions — 
the Equitable Society — his tremendous will-power and un- 
limited energy shone resplendent. The Equitable was 
Henry B. Hyde — in its beginning, through its trials and 

1 From a circular addressed by President McCall to the agents of 
the New York Life Insurance Company. 

164 



APPENDIX 165 

triumphs, and to the end of his career now honorably closed. 
He builded not for his life, however, but for all time, and 
the great trust he leaves, embellished by his name and per- 
sonality, enriched by his devotion and integrity, will be 
secure in the hands of those who were his friends as well as 
his associates, and who, honoring him in life, will perpetuate, 
unsullied, his memory in death. For his epitaph we may 
adopt the words applied to another, centuries ago, and 
fittingly repeated here with the homage of our profound 
sorrow : ** He has completed a monument more lasting than 
brass, and more sublime than the regal elevation of pyra- 
mids, which neither the wasting shower, the unavailing north 
wind, nor an innumerable succession of years and the 
flight of seasons shall be able to demoHsh." 

John A. McCall. 



PRESIDENT BATTERSON'S REMINISCENCES 

Over a period of thirty-five years it was my privilege to 
know Henry B. Hyde in a continued series of business and 
personal relations, which ripened a friendship that was never 
disturbed by disagreeing interests or opinions. 

Easily the foremost leader in the great work to which he 
unreservedly devoted his life, he followed his own convictions 
with a zeal and energy which were a constant challenge to 
preexisting forces and methods. The anxiety of his friends 
and the predictions of his competitors were constantly quick- 
ened by the boldness of his assumptions and the rapidity 
of his movements, until an abounding success compelled his 
most formidable opponents to adopt similar methods. 

Everything which directly or indirectly touched his com- 
pany with a rough hand at any point found the chief in 
readiness with a vigorous and masterful defense. Having a 
personal magnetism of unusual power, he drew about him 
in all advisory and practical departments the highest order 
of talent; and the results were phenomenal and unequaled. 
Tireless in his inspection of details, no item was too small 
for his critical attention. He judged men by their courage 
in overcoming difficulties and by successful performance. 
For excessive conservatism and timidity he had little time 
or patience. He seized with a gigantic grasp large under- 
takings before which timid men would quail, and he was 
fearless and prompt in their execution. Tender as a woman 
in his friendships, the charm of his confidence will never be 

i66 



APPENDIX 167 

forgotten by those who were near enough to enjoy its earn- 
est expression. These delicate and lovely traits of char- 
acter, cherished by all who experienced the impressions made 
by his inner life, will overpass all other achievements, how- 
ever great, and remain for them his best monument. In his 
last days there was no unworthy pride or disposition to 
magnify the work of his life; on the contrary, his strong 
desire that every sign of the asperities and friction of human 
ambition should be so completely obliterated that his depar- 
ture might be one of perfect peace with all mankind will 
remain as a sweet witness that he went into his new life for- 
giving and forgiven. 

By the death of Henry B. Hyde we have lost from our 
front rank a great leader and a sincere friend. The good he 
accomplished has been, and will continue to be, widely dis- 
tributed to inhabitants of many nations ; and no one has been 
harmed by the fact of his existence. His great affection for 
his family, his company, and the associates and friends of 
his choice who held up his tired arms when the shadows 
lengthened, will long be remembered in evidence of the 
most pathetic and delightful characteristic of an unusually 
busy life, both unique and remarkable. 

James G. Batterson. 



PRESIDENT HEGEMAN'S REMINISCENCES 

My acquaintance with the late Mr. Hyde extended over 
some thirty years. It cannot be said that I knew him inti- 
mately — perhaps few did. I knew him as one official would 
know another in the line of our chosen work, where kindred 
interests brought us more or less together. That work was 
one surpassing, probably, any other great economic move- 
ment of the age, in respect of the vastness of its operations 
when viewed in conjunction with the comparatively few 
men who have given marked direction to its development. 
When, among that few, one now and again displays master- 
ful endowment, his very prominence forms a focus on which 
concentrate the watchful eyes of his contemporaries. In his 
movements their interests are excited; with his operations 
they become familiar; toward his personality their attraction 
never abates. So that, when to such an one the summons 
comes, the sense of loss seems personal, and they who en- 
joyed somewhat of his confidence and came to know and 
admire his real character instinctively say : " A friend, and 
a dear friend, has fallen." 

So I say, and so I feel, of Mr. Hyde, and I am glad of the 
opportunity (though conscious of unfitness) of weaving a 
chaplet of flowers, though they are only modest forget-me- 
nots, culled from the meadows of a cherished memory. 

After all, the story of Mr. Hyde's life is the story of the 
Equitable, and that marvelous career may be cogently ex- 
pressed thus: 1859, assets, $100,000; surplus, nothing; 

168 



APPENDIX 169 

1898, assets, $258,000,000; surplus, $57,000,000. Does 
all this stand for the achievement of one man? No. Like 
many another stirring narrative, it is the product of collabo- 
ration. The Equitable has had strong men without and 
strong men within. Remembrance of the dead warrants no 
forgetfulness of the living. But the men closest to him, 
especially the one man who, for a generation, has nobly 
borne with him the ''heat and burden" of administration 
and upbuilding, are the most emphatic as to the towering 
mind that dominated all. Mr. Hyde sounded the key-note. 
He was the pace-maker. He led the charge. His was the 
white plume on which, in the thick of the fight, all eyes 
centered, and following which all came in at the victory. 

Seven years of preparation in the Mutual Life found him 
at twenty-five tired of subalternism and ripe for leadership. 
Thereupon he summoned into existence the Equitable. 
From the moment of its birth he had a purpose in life — a 
distinct aim that nothing ever daunted. The company 
began with a volume of business he had personally solicited 
which would be a handsome tribute to the brilliant field-men 
of to-day — men working under conditions which bear no 
comparison to the hard, pioneer work of 1859. 

He opened the throttle from the start, and he had no use 
for air-brakes. He crossed swords with twenty companies 
then in existence, and fought the fight later on against 
seventy competitors. He was a just antagonist, asking no 
odds beyond " fair play." I never heard from him a mean 
word about a rival. In his onslaughts — and they were 
mighty when he was aroused — he wasn't satisfied to get 
up early in the morning for preparation ; he was always up 
the day before. When most men were considering when to 
begin, he had it done. His feet, in the earlier days espe- 
cially, were always in the stirrups. 

It was his methods that made the Equitable the first com- 
pany in America to write forty millions of new business in a 



170 



APPENDIX 



single year. Then he threw down the gauntlet at fifty mil- 
lions ; then sixty. And so he went on until he was the first 
to cross the line with a hundred millions. Oh, yes, it has 
been done by others since ; but we are now speaking of the 
man who led the way. Longing for new worlds to conquer, 
he was the first to cross the ocean and compete for the busi- 
ness of Europe. Several American companies followed, but 
none led him. He lived long enough to pass all competitors 
in total business in force, according to the last State reports ; 
and the surplus of the Equitable stood in the same relative 
rank. But a single company exceeded it in assets and 
income, and that company had sixteen years' headway. The 
minute adopted by the Society May 10, 1899, recites that its 
accumulated funds, plus its payments to policy-holders, are 
" two hundred and seventy-five milHons more than any other 
life company has gathered within the corresponding period 
of its history." 

Verily, the man who could be the main instrumentaHty in 
a creative work like this must have been of noble stature. 
These things come not of themselves. They are wrought 
out patiently and painfully. They are the products of deep 
thought and heroic action. Mr. Hyde always did his own 
thinking, in the last analysis. He would seek advice, and 
he always followed what a friend gave him — provided he 
agreed with the friend! But, his course marked out, he 
hewed to the line ; he never faltered ; he never feared. I rarely 
knew a man with more sublime faith in himself. He believed 
that convictions were given to men to abide by; and he 
never distrusted Hyde. All his studying and counseling 
and weighing and doubting were done beforehand ; then the 
purpose, once formed, went on to fruition. 

Occasionally he would stop in at my office, on his way 
up-town, for a brief chat. I used to feel around for a subject 
upon which to warm him up. I would purposely oppose 
some idea of his for the treat I knew it would bring. It 



APPENDIX 171 

rarely failed. When he was aglow it was a rare sight. For 
all practical purposes one could be two or three rooms away 
and miss none of his conversation. He always spoke in 
italics, and not infrequently in small caps. He had a good 
right arm, too, and sometimes he would bring down his 
hand in gesture so emphatic as to make one sympathize with 
the poor, inanimate table that refused to catch the contagion 
of his energy. 

A hard fighter, he was, too, resourceful and tactful ; but he 
preferred the ways of peace, when peace could be achieved 
with honor. 

He was an inspirer of other men. Were the forces lagging 
in some part of the field? Then was reenacted the role of 
Sheridan down the Shenandoah valley. It has been said 
that there are men superbly educated and finely trained, but 
there is in them no light and no heat. No such man was 
Mr. Hyde. He was a torch that could Hght a thousand. 
He was an incarnate automobile ; he could charge himself 
from within himself, independent of exterior forces. He 
needed no power-house; he was his own dynamo. 

His capacity for work was a marvel. He was a veritable 
" galvanic battery in breeches." I once heard he was ill and 
in the doctor's hands, and so he was ; but there was a ste- 
nographer each side of the bed, and a typewriter clicking in 
the corner of the room. It seemed as though he had one hand 
in the East and another in the West, while his feet were down 
South and his head in Canada, or Europe, or both. 

I have not infrequently been told of his practical help to 
one or another of his agents, who, coming across a hard case, 
would make known the facts to Mr. Hyde. Thereupon they 
would go together, and Mr. Hyde's persuasive powers would 
often secure the application. A director of the writer's com- 
pany was thus canvassed by Mr. Hyde, personally, seven 
times before he felt constrained to surrender. 

Surely one may as well try to stay Niagara as to thwart 



172 



APPENDIX 



the power of a character thus tireless in its industry, cease- 
less in its energy, and boundless in its determination. 

Of his private life I had but little opportunity of knowledge, 
though I know from what has been told me that his impulses 
were generous, his sympathies and attachments deep and 
abiding, his benefactions great-hearted and large-handed, 
his fidelity to deserving friendships the very acme of loyalty 
and love. 

Of what he was to the choice spirits of his household, I 
can form an idea only from my general knowledge of the 
man. The altar of that sanctuary could never have been 
without its burning coal and its fragrant incense. It was a 
paradise to him, and to them that loved him and leaned upon 
him. 

He was the farthest removed from an attitudinarian of any 
man I ever knew who bore any approach to his heroic, posi- 
tive qualities ; and the one thing distasteful to him was any 
form of exhibitiveness. I can quite credit the statement, im- 
puted to him by an insurance journal some months ago, that 
he frequently went from his home in Fortieth Street to the 
Equitable office without accosting a man he knew outside the 
insurance interests. He helped along all good movements 
intelligently and liberally, but he evaded the eye of publicity. 
He did much good by stealth, and was occasionally found 
out by accident. His personality was essentially of the 
Corinthian order — that " vaunteth not itself." 

As to his influence upon the marvelous development of 
life insurance in the United States there can be no two 
opinions. That development is the wonder of the world. 
One billion five hundred millions of accumulated funds, so 
secure as to be intrenched behind two hundred and fifty 
millions of surplus, assuring more than seven billions of pro- 
tection, — and most of it done within a generation, — eloquently 
attest its magnificence. We cite these figures only to assert 
that to a handful of masterly men is this development mainly 



APPENDIX 173 

due, and to no one man, living or dead, so much as to the 
great character of whom we now reverently speak. 

It is not easy to allude to him or to his life-work without 
apparently invading the realm of fulsome flattery. Language 
that to the stranger might appear exaggerated would seem 
pulseless and cold to those who knew him. 

But true it is that against his fair honor and his good name 
not a man to-day would lift his voice ; and he has gone to 
his long home praised, honored, and beloved. 

The Board of Directors of the Equitable have authorized a 
statue of Mr. Hyde to be erected in the grand central hall 
of the Society's building. But no handiwork of painter or 
sculptor can adorn its walls or ornament its chambers at all 
comparable with the vivid and abiding memories that he has 
left as a priceless legacy to his family, his associates, his 
contemporaries, and to posterity. 

John R. Hegeman. 



DR. LAMBERT'S REMINISCENCES 

My first interview with Mr. Hyde was early in February, 
1859. He called upon me to get my influence with my 
father in starting a new life assurance company. He prom- 
ised me the medical examinership if the company should be 
organized. To my surprise, the project as presented by Mr. 
Hyde was favorably received by my father, who took great 
interest in obtaining the subscriptions necessary to start the 
company. Mr. Hyde believed in having a certain number of 
policies pledged provided a company could be organized. 
Hence from early in February to July, 1859, he spent a cer- 
tain number of hours each day in soHciting men to take poli- 
cies provided he succeeded in forming a company. I used 
to accompany him, and examined each one who would agree 
to take a policy under the conditions named. The names of 
those who took the policies are well known. But those who 
promised to assure were few in comparison with the number 
actually solicited. Mr. Hyde and I were very young men, 
and our reception by the majority was chilly and often dis- 
courteous. We were never actually kicked out, but discre- 
tion on our part probably saved us. One man whose office 
was in John Street was persuaded to submit to an examina- 
tion, but he was found to be ineligible on account of organic 
heart-trouble. He became so angry at what he considered 
the impudence of the whole transaction that we had to re- 
treat very hastily. 

The energy, persistence, and hopefulness of Mr. Hyde 
during the months from February to July were so great that 
he held together the eminent men whom he had interested in 
this new project. I never knew him to falter but once. He 

174 



APPENDIX 175 

had received promises of subscriptions for some ninety-odd 
thousand dollars of the capital, but still lacked about six thou- 
sand of the required amount. He was seemingly at the end 
of his resources, when he called on my father and told him that 
the company could not be formed without this additional 
sum. My father invited him to go with him to see Mr. 
Richards, of the firm of James W. Paige & Co., who was 
induced to subscribe the necessary six thousand dollars, and 
the fact was accomplished. 

Mr. Hyde insisted that each of the officers should be con- 
tent with a salary barely sufficient to maintain a decent 
living. The medical examiner was limited to three dollars for 
each examination made, but the total was not to exceed one 
thousand dollars a year, it being understood that any excess 
should go into the Society's treasury. 

In the early days the mornings were given to the office 
work. The afternoons and evenings were devoted to solicit- 
ing. We went together through the business sections, and 
many early policy-holders were won over by Mr. Hyde's per- 
suasive powers. Our custom was to make examinations at 
the business offices or residences of the applicants. 

Mr. Hyde's constant and never ceasing advice to me was 
not to accept on any plan for any amount a case which was 
in my judgment at all doubtful. His judgment was that a 
young company could not afford to take risks which an older 
company might safely assume. 

A very fortunate circumstance in the formation of the 
company was the fact that William C. Alexander assumed 
the duties of president. He was a man of affairs, accustomed 
to deal with men of all sorts and conditions. He was ex- 
tremely courteous, and met the directors and others in such a 
way that Mr. Hyde was able to concentrate his energies and 
thoughts on getting business and organizing the agencies ne- 
cessary for the development of new fields. 

Edward W. Lambert. 



REMINISCENCES OF THE OLDEST MEMBERS 
OF THE OFFICE FORCE 

The first clerk identified with the Society, James B. Loring, 
now registrar, was engaged in i860; the second, Thomas D. 
Jordan, now controller, came to the office in 1861. 

Four additional clerks were engaged in 1864. They are 
all living and all hold responsible positions. 

Mr. Loring says : 

I entered the office of the Society in August, i860. At that time 
the work was divided up somewhat like this : The president opened 
the mail and passed upon the applications, then handed them to Dr. 
Lambert for his approval. Mr. Hyde prepared the canvassing docu- 
ments, attended to all correspondence, to establishing agencies, and 
to all contracts for advertising, and kept things stirring generally — 
and they stirred. Mr. Phillips kept the books. The secretary did 
but little office work ; most of his time was spent in obtaining risks. 

When there was much printed matter to be mailed Mr. Hyde 
would sometimes stay down with me into the night and take a hand 
at addressing the envelopes. 

In a few months after I came the business increased so that Mr. 
Hyde was obliged to drop the correspondence, giving it to Mr. 
Phillips, who passed the books over to me. As I recall it, on ac- 
count of the war, business for 1861 and 1862 was rather uphill work ; 
but after that it went ahead with leaps and bounds. 

Mr. Jordan says: 

I called at the office of the Society in December, i860, in answer 
to an advertisement for a boy. Mr. Phillips told me to report for 

176 



APPENDIX 177 

duty early in the following year, which I did on the 17th of January, 
1 86 1. When I first came into the office Mr. Loring was the only clerk, 
and I think at that time there were only two regular city agents. I was 
the office boy. Loring kept the accounts, made out policies, and acted 
for a time as cashier. At first I copied letters, made up boxes of sup- 
plies to send to agents throughout the country, and about once a month 
received from Mr. Phillips, who was then doing the work of actuary, 
cashier, and bookkeeper, a list of pohcy-holders in the city whose 
premiums were overdue, and I was sent out to collect them. In that 
way quite a number of policies were saved. After a time I commenced 
to write policies. I used to practise handwriting, imitating Mr. 
Hyde's style as far as possible. 

In 1862 I decided to enter the army, and volunteered, but I came 
back to the Equitable in June, 1863. Mr. Loring held my place 
for me in my absence. In August, 1863, I was appointed cashier. 

I came in contact with Mr. Hyde every day. He came to the office 
early in the morning, and often stayed until late at night, writing 
letters and interviewing visitors. I often went to supper with him 
in a restaurant in Broad Street. 

Of course we had no stenographers in those days, and Mr. Hyde 
wrote all his own letters. He attended to the appointment of agents 
and also visited the agencies. At times when there was a rush, Mr. 
Hyde made out poHcies himself. He would stay down at the 
office night after night working on important matters. Often 
when an agent was unable to persuade a man to take a policy, 
Mr. Hyde would call on him, and he generally succeeded in closing 
the transaction, sometimes increasing the amount of the policy. He 
took up cases in which we failed to collect the premiums, and often 
induced the policy-holders to continue their assurance. 

Thomas H. Cuming vi^as engaged on the ist of May, 1864. 
In speaking of those early days Mr. Cuming says : 

Mr. Hyde always took time to scrutinize the work and test the 
abihty of each employee, evidently deeming it essential to surround 
himself with thoroughly capable men. He was never satisfied with 
slow work, but at the same time thoroughness and absolute accuracy 
were set forth in his curriculum as prime business virtues. Personal 



178 APPENDIX 

cleanliness and a neat appearance were required of the office staff, 
and those who wrote the policies were requested to wash their hands 
frequently, the pohcies being silent representatives before the pubhc of 
the Society. 

Mr, Hyde was skilled in the art of soliciting assurance, and from 
the beginning inspired others to accomplish large results. His 
personal influence on the business is shown by the fact that dur- 
ing the first two months the average amount of each policy issued 
was over $5000, a most excellent showing for those early days of 
the business. On the average, two policies a day were written in 
1859 and in i860. In 1861 and 1862 the average was four. In 
1863 the average was eight. 

Mr. F. H. Penning was engaged August 8, 1864. Mr. 
Penning says : 

It was customary in the early days for Mr. Hyde to visit the 
policy-desk the first thing upon his arrival at the office a httle 
after nine o'clock in the morning. It gave him pleasure to see 
the amount of the assurance apphed for and entered upon the books. 
He often used to say, " Don't let the business of to-day fall behind 
that of the corresponding day of last month." His arrival was 
looked forward to with pleasure. He greeted us with a cheerful 
" Good morning," and always showed that he was ready for the 
day's work. Many prominent men who called to see him failed to 
get away until after they had applied for a policy, leaving their checks 
for the first premium. It was not uncommon to get out a pohcy in 
fifteen minutes when Mr. Hyde was behind the application. 

Alfred W. Maine, now associate auditor of the Society, was 
engaged August 15, 1864. Mr. Maine, in touching upon 
the interest taken by Mr. Hyde in faithful clerks, especially 
during periods of illness (provided the illness was not due to 
their own misdeeds), says : 

During the long business trips that I took with Mr. Hyde in 1891 
and 1892, his kindly thoughtfulness never flagged. On one or two 
occasions Mr. Frank Ballard was also of the party, and I have always 



APPENDIX 179 

had a suspicion that one reason Mr. Hyde had for asking us to 
accompany him was that neither of us was in good health at the 
time, and that he felt that the trip would benefit us. 

By quick wit, ingenuity, and prompt action Mr. Hyde usually had 
his own way where other men would have been guided by the will 
of others or the force of circumstances. We stopped on one occa- 
sion at Dallas, Texas. Mr. Hyde was in the car in which we were 
traveling, in conference with several agents of the Society. Suddenly 
a committee of about twenty-five of the most prominent men of the 
town, including the mayor and the presidents of the principal banks, 
arrived at the station. The orator of the town, a prominent lawyer, 
dressed for the occasion in a silk hat, frock-coat, and white tie, began 
a long oration ; but Mr. Hyde was busy and had httle time to 
spare, and at the first pause broke in with the warmest expressions 
of gratification, thanked the committee for calling, assured them of 
the pleasure he experienced in meeting them, told them a few stories, 
shook hands, put them in a good humor all round, and retired to the 
car and returned to the business in hand. Some time afterwards, 
when the mayor had thought the whole matter out, he said : ** We 
came down with the pick of the town to take this man into camp, 
and here he has wiped up the ground with us." 

Mr. Hyde was ready at all times to grant interviews to reporters, 
and to have them publish appropriate statements regarding the 
Equitable, but he always sought to prevent laudatory references to 
himself. When our train ran into Louisville, Mr. Hyde remembered 
that on a former occasion a long article had appeared in one of the 
papers containing more information about himself than about the 
Society. So before the train stopped he jumped off the car, calling 
to me to follow him, crossed the yard, leaped the fence, and entered 
the city unobserved. 

On one occasion he held up a train. We were on our way home, 
and expected to spend a few hours in Washington to meet a num- 
ber of prominent people. I had telegraphed ahead to Chancellors- 
ville for two barbers to meet the train on its arrival to shave us, 
but only one barber appeared. Mr. Hyde was shaved first, and just 
as the barber started to shave me, the signal was given for the train 
to start. Mr. Hyde jumped off, grabbed hold of the conductor, and 
diverted his attention so effectually from his duty that the barber 



i8o APPENDIX 

completed his work, although he was forced to abandon his coat in 
escaping from the train. 

On one occasion an agent apphed for an advance of $500. I 
submitted this request, together with a statement of the agent's 
account, but Mr. Hyde protested that the condition of the account 
did not warrant the advance. I explained that the agent had 
worked faithfully and well ; that he had a large family ; that his 
wife and two of his children were ill, and that he had other difficul- 
ties to contend with, for which he was in no way responsible. As I 
talked, Mr. Hyde put up his hands and said, "Stop ! Stop ! Stop ! 
Stop ! " But I kept right on, knowing that when all the facts had 
been presented he would make an exception to strict business rules. 
It so turned out. He finally put his *' H " on the application. '' But," 
said he, ''tell the agent that I will never do it again." 

Francis W. Jackson, now auditor of the Society, was en- 
gaged August 23, 1864. Mr. Jackson says: 

During the dull period from 1877 to 1880 a reorganization of the 
clerical force of the office was made by the president, and as business 
was extremely bad at that time, it seemed necessary to cut down the 
office force. Several of the employees whose services were not alto- 
gether acceptable for one reason or another were discharged. Among 
the rest was one who had been with the Society for a number of 
years. He had a large family, and his dismissal did seem a great 
hardship. The chief reason for dismissing him was that his habits 
were not as regular as they should have been. But as the case 
seemed so painful, Mr. Jordan and I went to see the president 
and laid the facts before him. He heard patiently all there was to 
be said, and in reply simply remarked : " Why do you make my duty 
any harder for me than it is now ? " We felt that there was nothing 
more to be said, and withdrew ; but we learned afterwards that Mr. 
Hyde interested himself in this man's case and obtained a position 
for him where his little weaknesses were not so detrimental to his 
work as they would have been in the office of our Society. 



MR. BRIDGMAN'S REMINISCENCES 

In the summer of 1861 Mr. Hyde visited Chicago. He 
called on those engaged in the business of life assurance, among 
whom I was one. He made no suggestion to any agent that 
he should sever his connection with the company he was serv- 
ing. His purpose seemed rather to make the Equitable well 
known in life assurance circles. He spoke of the standing of 
its directors, of his hope that the Society would become 
worthy of the name he had given it, and of his purpose 
to make it all that a company should be. He was remark- 
ably handsome and agreeable, but there was nothing in his 
bright eye or agreeable manner to indicate the force or the 
varied talents with which I was to become familiar a few 
months later. There was something about him, however, 
that so awakened confidence in his ability that I soon wrote, 
asking him what inducements he was disposed to offer me 
to join the Equitable. His reply was characteristic : ** Come 
to New York at once at my expense." I went, and made an 
agreement to remove there as soon as possible. Before the 
Society had $200,000 in assets, capital included, I was pla- 
cing its poHcies, the first being No. 1339, on my own life. 

It was not an easy task for a stranger, during the early 
months of the Civil War, to place the policies of a small com- 
pany, with no surplus, in the hands of the people of New 
York, and I am confident that I would have failed utterly 
had not Mr. Hyde helped me in the beginning. When he 
went with me to see any one he used but few words. He 

181 



i82 APPENDIX 

simply filled in the blanks in the application, and his personal 
magnetism won the signature. There was an indescribable 
something about him too winning to be resisted. 

As an official Mr. Hyde was a many-sided man even then. 
He had the courage that feared no obstacle, the force to make 
continuous and rapid progress, the most lofty ambition, and 
the hot blood of youth, and all regulated by that prudence 
that never permitted him to depart from those sound mathe- 
matical principles that should be at the base, and at every 
stage of the building, of an institution built, " not for a day, 
but for all time." As he began early to revolutionize the 
business of Hfe assurance, he soon found competition enough 
to test his strength. If it were fair he met it heroically. If 
unfair he fought it with relentless vigor until it was abandoned 
or rendered harmless by exposure. He never met unfair 
competition on its own ground. I mean by this that he never 
departed from sound business principles because some com- 
petitor had done so. In early days he was not disposed to 
leave adverse criticism unnoticed, but after a time he ceased 
to be disturbed by the vaporings of the small, narrow, theo- 
retical men who were making more effort to prevent the 
growth of the Equitable than to promote the growth of the 
companies with which they were connected. Great as were 
his force and courage, these were not greater than his will. 
He abhorred excuses for failure, feeHng that there was no 
such thing as ''cannot," unless based on physical impossibility. 
After Mr. Hyde had fully made up his mind relative to 
anything, it displeased him to have any one suggest changes, 
or to manifest reluctance to cooperate in putting his plans 
into execution. But the converse was equally true. Until 
his mind was fully made up, he sought suggestions from every 
source that he thought might make the plan in his mind more 
effective. Such strength of will could not fail to cause some 
friction, but it usually cooled off quickly, as Mr. Hyde never 
harbored long any feeling of ill will toward those who had 



APPENDIX 183 

honestly opposed him. In fact, he frequently changed his 
decisions in minor matters voluntarily. 

In 1 86 1 the home of the Equitable was on the second story 
of No. 92 Broadway. Four rooms were then sufficient for 
its business, one in front, one in the center, and two in the 
rear, one of the latter being occupied by the president, the 
other by agents. The year following, however, more room 
was taken on the third story, ^nd long before the Society 
left that locality additional room was found by communi- 
cating on the first and second stories of Nos. 94 and 96 
Broadway. 

Even in those days of small things Mr. Hyde displayed, 
and put into exercise, those signal powers of organization that 
made him such a leader of men. Although a great leader, 
and bold where he could see his way, nevertheless his caution 
was also so great that he was compelled to give personal at- 
tention to details. He could not delegate the work of any 
department sufficiently to save himself from that incessant 
toil which undoubtedly shortened his life. 

No one knew better than did Mr. Hyde, however, the im- 
portance of rest. Ten years ago, after urging me to take the 
rest that he thought important for me to take, he spoke 
freely and feelingly of his own need of rest, and the ob- 
stacle in the way of his taking it. That obstacle was his 
love for the Equitable. He said in substance this: "I do 
not need the compensation I am receiving from the So- 
ciety. Those who think that my work is for money do 
not know my motives. If it were not for my pride in the 
Equitable and my love for it, no salary would tempt me to 
render the service that takes so much of my strength. Were 
it not for my devotion to the company, I would spend my en- 
tire summer here." This was said as we were walking one 
evening about the grounds of his beautiful home at Bay 
Shore. The moon was at the full, and all was so quiet, save 
the sound of the sea in the distance, as to invite the rest he 



i84 APPENDIX 

longed for. But he could give himself but little of the luxury 
of rest. The temperament that made him the man he was 
compelled him to concentrate his attention precisely where 
it was so continuously concentrated, to apply his powers just 
where they were so persistently applied. It would take a 
large volume to fitly mention the reforms he introduced. I 
will mention but one — the prompt payment of every loss, 
unless it was clearly fraudulent. Many years ago, after 
speaking to him of a loss that came soon after the policy 
was issued, he said in substance : " Losses by death do not 
disturb me in the least. The Equitable is in business to pay 
losses. It was not organized to engage in litigation with 
widows and fatherless children, or to make money by receiv- 
ing interest on what may be due them, or by discounting 
policies that should be paid immediately and in full." The 
sooner losses were paid the better he was pleased. Imme- 
diate payment was one of the reforms he introduced. The 
only department to which Mr. Hyde gave but little attention 
was the department in which losses were settled. 

All who knew Mr. Hyde personally or by reputation, in- 
cluding his strongest competitors, were never in doubt of the 
fact that he was a man of marked and striking individuality 
and force, of keen observation, of tireless energy, of perse- 
vering industry, of indomitable will, and of courage great 
enough to fear no obstacle, to quail before no adversary. Such 
a man could not fail to take and hold an exalted place, nor 
fail to win admiration in every circle in which he moved. 

Measured by years, Mr. Hyde was not given great length 
of life, but measured by his achievements, few men have Hved 
so long. He now rests from his labors, but his work will 
follow him through many generations to lessen the burdens 
that bereavement will bring to many homes in many lands. 

William H. Bridgman. 



MR. BLISS'S REMINISCENCES 

Sometimes I think of Mr. Hyde as he was when he solicited 
me to apply for an insurance on my life. An '* ordinary life 
policy" was the only form spoken of, and from this the 
policy-holder was not to receive a dividend until the end of 
five years; but the system of holding back dividends was 
doubtless the safeguard of an infant insurance company at 
that time. My examination was in a form so brief and simple 
that it now appears to be ludicrous when compared with the 
long, complex, and scientific form in use to-day, its most urgent 
questions being, " Have you had the yellow fever? " " Have 
you had the smallpox ? " It was indorsed by Mr. Hyde and 
approved by Dr. Lambert on the thirtieth day of August, 
1859 ; the next day I paid the premium and received a poHcy 
for $5000. 

At that time many inteUigent people were looking askance 
at life insurance, or they were regarding it as a future rather 
than a present necessity ; and so long as they believed them- 
selves to be in good health they were not ready to apply for 
a policy nor willing to be persuaded to take one. But in Mr. 
Hyde's view the time for a man to take a life insurance is 
when he can get it. His exhortation was like that of the 
ancient sun-dial which said to every passer-by : ** Make use of 
the day, for the night cometh " ; and his wonderful success 
in persuading reluctant men to be insured while the oppor- 
tunity was at hand showed him to be the chief of life insur- 
ance solicitors. 

185 



i86 APPENDIX 

When he was considering plans for launching the Equi- 
table Life Assurance Society, which had been framed in his 
mind, he was living in bachelor apartments at the southwest 
corner of Irving Place and Fifteenth Street, New York city. 
In that house his plans for the proposed company were dis- 
cussed, evening after evening, with a few intimate friends who 
were desirous to do what they could in aid of his venture. 
These included at times his father, the only one of the coterie 
who personally knew the roughness of the road that was to 
be traveled. 

Mr. Hyde was always the impressive personality of the 
company which he had created. His enthusiasm for it was 
ever in a steady glow ; and with such care did he watch over 
the large and the small details of its business that he became 
eminently qualified to adopt, as he did, every reasonable im- 
provement which had been made possible or necessary by 
the progress of time, the growth of the Equitable, or the 
demands of public opinion. He believed in the dignity of 
life insurance and in its importance as a factor in the welfare 
of communities. He would present it to the public in a 
serious way, and he would have men reminded of it daily. 
In a memorandum addressed to me in January, 1883, he 
said : " I think it would be a good plan to get up a calendar 
on a card, with little squares of paper for every day, contain- 
ing some motto about life insurance, pasted on the front. It 
seems to me a good way to attract a man's attention, crack- 
ing at him every morning with a life insurance reminder." 

His idea that life insurance is a subject to be treated with 
serious thoughts I can illustrate by various memoranda sent 
to me. In one of December, 1888, he said: *' In the next 
number of our insurance paper I think I would quote Shak- 
spere's ' Seven Ages of Man ' or Addison's * Vision of Mir- 
zah.' Also look through the ' Compendium of Shakespeare,* 
in which his writings are arranged according to subjects, and 
if you find any appropriate thoughts about Hfe and death I 



APPENDIX 187 

think it would be well to make use of them. Also write an 
article showing when a man intends to get a life insurance it 
is one of the most important transactions he can enter into. 
If he intends to buy a house and lot, or even to buy a horse, 
he is very particular to investigate everything about it. His 
insurance contract may last thirty or forty years, and he 
ought to be certain that he enters the best company. I do 
not want the article to be so serious that a person reading it 
will take about ten years to investigate before insuring." 

In a memorandum of January, 1889, he said : ** I wish you 
would be on the lookout for some appropriate poetry for our 
insurance paper. What we want is serious poetry. We do 
not want ' Jim Bludsoe,' now the Mississippi accident has 
passed." In another memorandum he said: "I value your 
articles on life insurance, and like the style in which you v/rite 
them. The use of good EngHsh and plain sentences goes 
a good way in this world. The other day I went into Scrib- 
ner's. The young man who waited on me said : * Your com- 
pany made me feel very badly,' 'What have we done? ' I asked. 
He replied : ' You rejected my application for a life insurance, 
and I cannot get over it. I thought I was in perfect health.' 
You might take this as a text for an article in our paper." 

As the years went by, and the course of the Equitable 
Society was crowned with a continuous success, Mr. Hyde's 
thoughts turned back to its early days, and he endeavored to 
collect for preservation all objects that had been associated 
with them, such as the sign affixed to the entrance of the first 
office of the Society, the first desk at which he had his official 
seat, the first circular and the first advertisement which he 
issued to the public, and indeed everything that had to do 
with the small beginnings of the year 1859. 

It was nearly twenty years after the Equitable Society 
began to do business when Mr. Hyde took his first vacation, 
persuaded to do so by an ill condition of his health. He 
then invited me to be his companion on a journey around the 



i88 APPENDIX 

world. We sailed from New York for England on Septem- 
ber 21, 1878, and returned to New York from Japan on June 
21, 1879. Although he was occasionally so ill as to require 
medical attendance during the early part of the journey, he 
thoroughly enjoyed the diversions of travel ; but his business 
habits were so natural that he could not refrain, until we 
reached the opposite side of the globe, from keeping himself 
in touch, by mail and telegraph, with the office at 120 Broad- 
way. After touring in Europe, we sailed from Marseilles for 
Egypt; there we loitered awhile, and then on Christmas day 
of 1878 we departed from Cairo for Suez, Bombay, and the 
farthest East. In every city where we tarried, whether of 
India, China, or Japan, he searched factories and bazaars for 
rare works of native art. Every object constructed by man's 
hand that was great or refined attracted his thoughtful atten- 
tion. At Agra, he made visits by daylight and moonHght to 
the delicate Taj Mahal, so enchanted was he with its beauty. 
Writing from Calcutta to my father and mother at home, he 
said : " I wish you could see the Taj. It would bring to your 
mind what St. John relates of his vision on the island of Pat- 
mos. We have a very large book of photographs, and can 
show you many things on our return, but you cannot realize 
the beauty of the Taj unless you see it." 

I could not be with him for so long a time and under such 
varying circumstances without discovering his good qualities 
as a companion of travel, and his knowledge in matters of 
art and literature. It was easy to notice that his judgments 
of men and things were not borrowed. When criticizing 
some of the heroes of history I have heard him condemn the 
popular estimate of Napoleon for the reason that the man 
obtained no ultimate success, nor knew, as one of his mar- 
shals said, how to die as a soldier. He never described the 
greatness of an achievement by the adjective " Napoleonic." 

Although Mr. Hyde visited Europe many times in later 
years, that journey around the world afforded him more 



APPENDIX 189 

pleasures for memory than did any other foreign tour. He 
frequently advised his traveling friends to follow his example. 

In a letter written to me from Paris in April, 1885, the 
journey was still uppermost in his mind: '* I have thought of 
you a great many times since I left New York. On my way 
to Algiers I took breakfast in the same coffee-room at the 
Hotel du Louvre et de la Paix where we stopped in '78. I 
sat in the same seat, only Julien Davies was not in the other 
end of the room, and you were not opposite, as then. I 
drove all about Marseilles, took the same drives that we took, 
went up to the Cathedral on the hill, etc. Then I went 
along the Riviera, stopping at Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo, 
and Mentone. The only part of my former trip that I can- 
not remember is along this line. I think I must have been 
pretty sick at the time. I found that Nice did not look at all 
as I had remembered it. While I remember the rest of my trip 
very distinctly all the way through, this part seems to have 
faded out of my mind, although I remember Marseilles, I 
would really like to go away with you again, as I have such 
pleasant recollections of our voyage around the world." 

In administering the affairs of the Equitable office Mr. 
Hyde's sense of justice was such that he did not hesitate to 
reverse an act or an opinion if it had been shown to him to be 
erroneous. His intellect was so clear that he could see at 
once the tendency of new plans proposed to him, and he was 
able to decide whether they were fit to be considered or re- 
jected. He could express strong indignation at wrong-doings 
and at blunders or mistakes caused by inattention to duty; 
yet he had sympathetic and what I may call paternal feel- 
ings for those who were true to the interests of the busi- 
ness which he had founded. One who has been in the office 
many years, whose industry and modesty of demeanor are 
well known to his associates, said to him : '* Mr. Hyde, I am 
very tired. I feel used up. I want to resign and go away." 

" James, go to Europe," said Mr. Hyde ; " go as soon as 



I90 APPENDIX 

you can get ready ; be gone a year if you like ; your salary 
shall be continued, and I will allow you fifteen hundred dol- 
lars for expenses." 

Accordingly he went to Europe, was away four months, 
and then returned in good health to his former duties in the 
office. 

Mr. Hyde was not forgetful of the members of the office 
force when they were in affliction. It was his custom to 
communicate his sympathies by letter, and sometimes orally, 
for the latter purpose sending a messenger from his private 
room saying: '* Mr. Hyde wants to see you." There are 
many men connected with the Equitable who can say that 
they have been comforted by his sympathy at such times. 
Writing to one in 1880, he said: "The announcement of 
death makes us pause in the hurry of our occupations. Dur- 
ing my business life many such announcements have come to 
me ; and I often think of the hymn, 

Friend after friend departs ; 

Who hath not lost a friend? 
There is no union here of hearts 

That hath not here its end." 

Although Mr. Hyde was the founder, the president, and 
the active manager of one of the largest and most popular 
life insurance companies that ever existed, he showed no 
pride of office. His tastes were simple, his daily life unosten- 
tatious, his feelings democratic ; and withal there was a ten- 
der strain in his nature which caused those who knew him 
well to regard him with esteem, and to regret that he passed 
away before his time. 

William Root Bliss. 



REMINISCENCES OF THE OLDEST AGENTS 

None of the agents who canvassed for the Equitable when 
it was first organized are alive to-day ; but there are still a 
number who became identified with the Society in the sixties. 
Of these N. W. Foster of Riverhead, Long Island, made a 
contract with the Society January 22, 1861. Mr. Foster says: 

The first policy issued through my agents was No. 954, on my 
own life, dated February 5, 1861. I had written for an agency, and 
received a satisfactory communication from the Society, in which the 
following advice was embodied : " If you are going to ask others to 
assure, you ought to have a policy on your own life." The policy 
is now forty years old, and I am still paying premiums on it. 

It may not be without interest to note that the Society has paid 
the assurance on the hves of two of my policy-holders where no 
proofs of death could be presented. They were both seafaring men, 
whose ships were lost at sea. The assurance in one case enabled the 
widow to keep her family together and train her children for useful 
careers. In both cases the prompt payment of the assurance was 
of almost inestimable value. 

W. H. S. Whitcomb of Burlington, Vermont, did not make 
a contract direct with the Society until the summer of 187 1, 
but the first policy issued through his instrumentality, No. 
949, was written in February, 186 1, and antedates the one on 
Mr. Foster's life. Mr. Whitcomb says : 

Early in the year 1861 I led my first customer into the office of 
Charles J. Alger, the representative of the Equitable in Burlington. 

191 



192 APPENDIX 

Policy No. 949 was issued on his life. Ten years after securing my 
first policy for the Equitable I engaged with it regularly, and have 
been one of the Equitable's managers ever since. The first interview 
with Mr. Hyde satisfied me that I should be pleased with a business 
relation with him. I had been advised by the Hon. L. G. B. Cannon 
that Mr. Hyde would probably be the foremost man in the world in 
the business of hfe assurance. Other companies had attained great 
positions when I secured my first application for the Equitable, but I 
did not find any of the officers of other companies characterized as Mr. 
Hyde was spoken of. He must have impressed men even at the be- 
ginning as a person of unusual endowments and rare ability. 

He said to me that if I wanted to engage with a company in 
which the agent and the policy-holder were both cared for, in which 
there was no '' note humbuggery " (which was the disease of assur- 
ance at that time), he could give me a situation that I would after^ 
wards, when I came to know more about it, be pleased to hold. I 
had not been with the Society three months before he came to Bur- 
lington and outlined to me his idea of the assurance business. He 
was a genius in his way of getting at the subject-matter to be con- 
sidered. Nothing seemed to be able to deter him from what he 
thought was right. He was aggressive beyond any man I ever 
saw. His mastery of details was something unusual, and while he 
was so aggressive, so forceful, so thoroughly masterful, there was 
yet something about him that never in the least degree offended. I 
cannot now recall a single expression that he ever used toward me 
that was in the least degree likely to wound my feelings. Often- 
times he had put his arm around me and asked me if I would not do 
certain things for the Equitable, as though he were my own brother. 
I came to believe him the most wonderful man ever connected with 
our business. 

William H. Bridgman also began to work for the Society 
as an agent in i86i. Subsequently he joined the ofifice force. 
His reminiscences have already been given. 

William Harlan Page, who has represented the Society 
in the city of New York continuously since the autumn of 
1865, says: 



APPENDIX 193 

In the earlier days of the Society, when at No. 92 Broadway we 
were working in three small rooms for offices, Mr. Hyde impressed 
me as a man of most marvelous versatihty, of wonderful intuition, 
knowledge of men, genius in winning men and handling them, and 
a happy faculty of keepmg us in a state of splendid espiit de corps, 
and our enthusiasm and good feeling always at the highest pitch. 
He had a noble purpose— to lay foundations broad for future 
success. I well remember when he rented two or three rooms 
in the adjoining building, and some of us thought he was broaden- 
ing out ahead of the business ; but his far-sightedness was beyond 
us all. He saw clearly how to move and execute when others had 
only a glimpse. We could not help but follow in his lead to the 
great success we have since attained. 

In those days he often went out canvassing to aid us in closing 
risks. I remember, one day in 1865, taking him down the street to 
clinch a man whose main argument to me was that he did not 
beheve in Mr. Hyde. Together we soon convinced him. that he had 
better not disbelieve, and closed him then and there for a good-sized 
policy. 

I. Layton Register of Philadelphia, who has represented 
the Society without interruption since the early part of the 
year 1866, says: 

Mr. Hyde was one of those men who was ever thoughtful of the 
interests of agents, and won them over to him even though he 
scolded them. He often dropped into my office when passing 
through Philadelphia. Sometimes we would take a drive together, 
and his ripened experience and helpful spirit made his conversation, 
at such times, not only intensely interesting, but of great practical 
value. I am sure that the strongest tie which bound the old agents 
to Mr. Hyde was their knowledge that he was their friend. 

T. B. Penton, whose first contract with the Society was 
dated May 31, 1866, says: 

When I came from the West to New York in 1865, the Society 
was so young and so Htde known that I found it necessary to talk 



194 



APPENDIX 



Mr. Hyde rather than the Equitable. Many men would say : '' I 
don't know anything about your company, but I know you very 
well, and I recognize the sort of man that Mr. Hyde is, and so I'll 
take a pohcy. Hurrah for Hyde ! " 

I was introduced to Mr. Hyde by James H. McCorkle, one of the 
Society's earliest agents, and in a few moments I had made a con- 
tract. You know that two words from Mr. Hyde were equivalent 
to forty words from an ordinary man. Many a time during my 
early struggles I should have failed utterly if Mr. Hyde had not 
come to my rescue. He was always kind and considerate and fer- 
tile in suggestion, and a talk with him always gave me new courage 
and renewed power. 

B. R. Miller, whose first contract with the Society was 
dated March 31, 1867, says: 

Mr. Hyde's first office was only about ten by seven. He had a 
small table in it and, I think, two chairs. When his hat and gloves 
were on the table, I used to think there was room for nothing else ; 
but his field of operations was not restricted to his desk or his office. 

The Equitable was never out of Mr. Hyde's mind when he was 
awake, and I have no doubt he dreamed of the Society during all 
his sleeping hours. In the old days, after business hours, I often 
walked up Broadway with him, and our conversation was always 
about life assurance. Sometimes he would say : " Let's pick out 
all the men whom we think we could assure for $10,000." Then we 
would walk along like a couple of boys, seeing which could find the 
most. 

He was always ready to go out with an agent who had any push 
in him, and on such occasions would put off any caller — even a bank 
president. 

Mr. Hyde never gave up anything that he undertook to do. He 
asked me on one occasion to try my hand at collecting certain debts 
which lawyers, professional collectors, and others had vainly attempted 
to secure. I felt that after all the others had failed it was not likely 
that I would succeed, but he was so persistent that I agreed to make 
the attempt. Among others, I struck a man who owed $1 200. He told 
me he would settle the account in a few days. I turned the bill over, 



APPENDIX 



195 



showing him where entries had been made of the different dates on 
which he had promised to settle, and said : " If you can't pay all, 
pay me something on account." Finally he went to his cashier and 
said : " Give this gentleman a check for ^^^this bill." The cashier 
was busy and did not catch what was said to him. When he was 
able to give me his attention he said: "Have you the bill?" I 
handed it to him, and he gave me a check for the whole amount. 
Then I slipped quietly out of the office. The check was drawn on 
the Park Bank, and I went to the teller (whom I happened to know) 
and said: '* Give me twelve one-hundred-dollar bills right off; I'm 
in a hurry." I then took the money to the office of the Society, and 
told the cashier to credit the amount to the proper account at once. 
Then, having told Mr. Hyde what I had done, I said : " That man 
will be here in a few minutes red-hot. I'll skip." Soon after I had 
gone, the man came in. He said he had been buncoed out of his 
money by a swindler. The inference was that I had pocketed the 
money, and that neither he nor the Society would ever see it again. 
Mr. Hyde listened to his visitor's story, and then took him to the cash- 
ier's desk and asked if anything had been paid. When Mr. Jordan 
found the entry, Mr. Hyde looked over his shoulder and said: *'Oh, 
this was collected by Miller. That man is all right. If you had told 
me his name in the first instance, I could have reassured you at once." 
Mr. Hyde had many devices for stimulating agents. One was to 
pit one man against another. Once he sent for me and said : 
" Miller, I can find a man who can do more business in thirty days 
than you can." I replied: "If you can't you haven't got many 
good men about you. I don't feel able to do much business at 
present." I had written between $150,000 and $175,000 during the 
previous month. Mr. Hyde went on to say that he thought McCor- 
kle (who was one of the famous canvassers of the day) could beat 
me. At last he got me so stirred up that when he offered to bet me 
one hundred dollars that McCorkle could do more business than I 
could in a month, I took the bet. Then Mr. Hyde said : " I want 
you to understand. Miller, that if McCorkle should at any time wish 
me to go with him to see one of his cHents and at the same time 
you should wish me to go with you, I shall go with McCorkle." 
" All right," I said ; " you can take McCorkle out with you every 
day, and I'll beat both of you." I have no doubt that he talked 



196 APPENDIX 

to McCorkle just as he talked to me. However that may be, I won 
the bet. My recollection is that McCorkle secured $216,000, and 
that I obtained $563,000. Mr. Hyde originated the plan of allotting 
to each agent the amount of business expected from him during a 
given period, and these allotments were usually entered upon cards 
and sent to the agents with a stirring letter calling upon them for 
their best efforts. The allotment cards covering one of these com- 
petitions, in which I was the victor, were gathered together by Mr. 
Hyde and placed in a frame and hung in his office, with the amount 
written by the agent in each case indorsed on his card. 

One morning Mr. Hyde came to the office soon after eight o'clock, 
when he and Mr. James W. Alexander apportioned to each agent a 
certain amount of work for the day. He sent out a letter in 
which he said : '' We have determined to write $600,000 in one 
day." He asked me to contribute $50,000. I told him I could not 
obtain $50,000 in a single day. He repHed : "You can if you try." 
I went out, and in an hour I had assured one man for $15,000. 
in the afternoon I secured another for $10,000. When I went 
home I was still wondering how I could fill my allotment. Finally 
I remembered a tradesman with whom I often had dealings, and 
to whom I had talked some time before about assurance. I said 
to myself that the time had come for him to act, or I would have 
no further dealings with him. I telegraphed to Dr. Lambert that I 
would call to see him that night with a man to be examined. 
After dinner I went to a livery stable and got a carriage and in- 
vited the man to take a drive with me. Then I explained what 
I wanted, and said: *'You must come with me and get your as- 
surance to-night." Finally I induced him to go with me to Dr. 
Lambert's house, persuaded him to sign an application, and a policy 
was afterwards issued for $25,000, which is still in force. 

When business fell off, Mr. Hyde would write letters to all the 
agents. He used to say : *' Get your business under such headway 
that you can every now and then jump on and ride." 

Once he called a number of the active city agents together, and 
offered to provide a cab for each one for a month on the following 
conditions: If the agent secured $100,000 of assurance, the Society 
would pay for the cab ; if the agent failed, he would have to pay. 
I think I was the only one who tried the experiment. My recoUec- 



APPENDIX 197 

tion is that I kept the cab for ninety days and wrote one miUion of 
business. But at the end of that time I was tired out and good for 
nothing for lack of exercise. 

The recollections of Byron A. Beal, who became identified 
with the Society in April, 1867, although his first direct con- 
tract was not issued until July 8, 1868, have already been 
quoted. 

W. P. Halsted joined the Society in the summer of 1867. 
He now holds the official position of collector, but in those 
early days confined his efforts to canvassing for life assurance. 
Mr. Halsted says: 

Mr. Hyde was always trying to please and encourage the agents, 
and was ready at all times to accept hints and suggestions. 

Away back in the sixties, coming in out of the cold one winter 
day, down at the old office at No. 92 Broadway, he met me at the 
door, and slapping me on the shoulder, said : " Now, here is a 
chance for you to win a prize — a silver pitcher and salver. We're 
going to put up two prizes, and you can certainly win one if you'll 
roll up your sleeves and pitch in." The magnetism of the man 
made me feel that the prize was mine already ; but I replied : 
"Mr. Hyde, I don't want a pitcher. I have an old silver watch 
here, and I need a good timepiece that I may fill my engagements 
to the minute with the men I'm after." Quick as lightning he 
slapped me again on the shoulder and said : " We'll make the 
prizes two first-class watches." I was so encouraged by his words 
that I pitched in and won one of those watches — a fine imported 
Swiss watch, which still serves me faithfully. James M. Brawner of 
St. Louis won the other watch. These were the first watches ever 
presented by the Equitable to its agents. 

Charles Hopkins, who joined the Society in December, 1867, 
says: 

Mr. Hyde was an efficient agent before he became president; 
and this was a prime factor in his success as a manager of canvassers 
for Hfe assurance. He sympathized with the agent in his trials and 



198 APPENDIX 

difficulties. He was quick to recognize an agent's ability, and to 
show his appreciation of successful achievement. 

One cold night in the winter of 1885 I started on the night 
train for Detroit to close a negotiation for a $50,000 poHcy with a 
man whose enthusiasm had cooled. I spent two days and nights 
in traveling through a blizzard, finally walking a mile through a 
snow-drift to reach him. My mission was successful, and on my 
way back to New York I telegraphed Mr. Hyde that in spite of 
the blizzard I had secured the application. Mr. Hyde showed my 
telegram to all the agents in the office, and I have no doubt he used 
it as a lever to obtain a large amount of additional business. 

Samuel Pickford, whose first contract with the Society was 
dated January 8, 1869, says: 

When I was introduced to Mr. Hyde, I said : '* Mr. Hyde, do 
you believe that I will make a successful agent? " He laid both 
hands on my shoulders, and looking me full in the face as if he could 
see right through me, he replied : " Young man, come with me and I 
will take care of you. I have no doubt of your success." He 
placed me under Mr. Page's care to learn the business, and I was 
associated with him for about a year before making a contract direct 
with the Society. 

Mr. Hyde's firmness in adhering to fundamental principles in 
governing the Equitable has often been impressed upon me. On 
one occasion a Sunday newspaper published a violent attack upon 
the management of the Society. I happened to be the first agent 
at the office on the following Monday morning. When Mr. Hyde 
saw me, he said : " Pickford, have you read that article against the 
Equitable? What do you think of it?" "It is blackmail! " I 
answered. " Yes," he said ; and bringing his hand down upon the 
desk, he continued : " I'll see the Equitable sunk so deep in the 
bowels of the earth that a flash of lightning will never resurrect it 
before I will consent to pay directly or indirectly a dollar of black- 
mail. I have no doubt about the success of the Society ; and, Pick- 
ford, let us work together this year to make the Equitable more 
successful than it has ever been before." This attack was quickly 
turned to the Society's advantage. 



APPENDIX 199 

On another occasion I introduced a gentleman to Mr. Hyde who 
intimated that he was not satisfied with the management of the 
Society. Mr. Hyde astonished him by replying : " So am I dissat- 
isfied with the management of the Equitable ; but as long as I am 
connected with it I intend to strive to make its management better 
and better every year." He said " Good morning," and my 
visitor joined our ranks without further demur. 

One day as Mr. Hyde was hastening to a meeting of the Board 
of Directors, he turned as he passed my desk to ask me how I was 
getting along. He thus failed to observe a little girl who was sell- 
ing shoe-laces and matches, and ran against her. She had a number 
of pennies in her hand, and they fell to the marble floor. Although 
Mr. Hyde was in great haste, he stopped to pick up the pennies, 
slipping into the pile a coin from his own pocket. As he put the 
money into the child's hand, he said : " Excuse me ; I didn't mean 
to do it," and then hurried on to his meeting. 

R. Textor, whose first contract with the Society was dated 
May, 1869, says: 

Mr. Hyde was prompt to show his appreciation of those agents 
who were successful. Those, on the other hand, who were unsuccess- 
ful promptly discovered that he had his eye upon them, and that he 
valued them according to their merits. He often said, '* It is better 
to wear off the soles of your shoes than the seat of your breeches." 

E. A. Spencer, whose first contract with the Society was 
dated September 10, 1869, has already been quoted. He 
is the last of the remaining agents who came with the Equi- 
table in the sixties.^ 

1 It would be interesting to hear also from agents, still living, who joined 
the Society in 1870 and in subsequent years ; but lack of space forbids. 



DR. BOMBAUGH'S REMINISCENCES 

Twenty-eight years ago, in the columns of the *' Baltimore 
Underwriter," the writer passed in review the names and 
characteristics of the pioneers of Hfe insurance in the United 
States, the master spirits whose commemorative statues were 
presumably destined to fill the vacant niches in the insurance 
Valhalla. He took his text from Ecclesiasticus xliv. 7 : *' All 
these were honored in their generations, and were the glory 
of their times." Credit was given to the leaders of the most 
important financial and sociological movement of an eventful 
period for patient and faithful labor in upbuilding the temple 
of life insurance, in disseminating the blessings and benefits 
of the insurance system, and in training agents and educating 
the public. In a memorable group of contemporaneous work- 
ers one figure was conspicuous — Henry B. Hyde. He was too 
busy with the task of inspiring his fellow- workers with his own 
enthusiasm, of arousing in the apathetic new energy and un- 
accustomed earnestness, of harmonizing opposing forces and 
mastering adverse conditions, of winning and enlisting recruits, 
of extending the boundaries of organization and expanding 
the area of achievement, to concern himself with his own in- 
dividuaHty. It was the brilliant success of the Equitable, not 
self-exaltation, that constituted his pleasure and his pride. In 
its growth, its advancement, its triumph, from year to year, 
was transparent^ shown the end and aim of his life, his 
"heart's desire and prayer," his supreme ambition. In the 
gradual approaches toward the attainment of his ideal were 

200 



APPENDIX 20I 

exhibited a breadth of operation, a display of sagacity and 
boldness, a degree of endurance and of unsparing effort, which 
furnished material for the most remarkable chapter in the his- 
tory of life insurance. 

On several occasions, in the course of different tours in 
Europe, the writer met Mr. Hyde while traveling ostensibly 
for ** rest and recreation." It was plainly perceptible that in 
his case rest and recreation meant renewed activity in another 
sphere of operation. These terms were synonyms for inces- 
sant exercise of executive abihty, fresh impulses of genius, and 
fresh demonstration of fertility of resources. For one with 
such faculty of leadership there was no rest in the ordinary 
sense of restfulness. And so the wear and tear of the mech- 
anism stopped the wheels of life in time to deprive his sad- 
dened associates of his presence at the celebration of the 
fortieth anniversary of the Equitable. 

The proposition to erect a portrait statue in the Equitable 
Building, itself one of the grandest of monuments, commands 
universal approbation. 

Charles C. Bombaugh. 



MR. LAKEY'S REMINISCENCES 

I RECALL meeting Mr. Hyde on a day in late autumn, 1864, 
in the old office, up a flight of stairs, on the block where 
the great Equitable Building now stands. He was then 
about thirty- two years of age, tall, spare, straight, quick in 
movement. I was in the employ of another company, and 
called for information regarding some policy issued by the 
Equitable. Mr. Hyde's open manner won me at once. He 
answered my questions, and spoke with enthusiasm of what 
the Society was doing. What impressed me then, and what 
impressed me most until the day the great man ceased to take 
an active interest in life insurance affairs, was the strength of 
his personality. At the time I speak of, the Equitable was 
not looked upon as a formidable rival by what were then 
considered the great companies. But even then there were to- 
kens on the part of the young company of strength of pinion ; 
growth had not been phenomenal, but it was hardy. 

Mr. Hyde's manner was an augury. A glance at his 
speaking face showed the confidence he had in the future of 
the Equitable. I am not so sure that the prophetic instinct 
no longer exists, that coming events do not sometimes cast 
their shadows before. How could this man have wrought 
as he did at the beginning had he not had some vision of 
the things that were to be? And did not the spirit of pro- 
phecy belong to life insurance in its earlier day, seeing that it 
has come to be one of the noblest expressions of Christianity 
itself, the doing of good to the bodies and souls of men ? On 

202 



APPENDIX 203 

its fortieth anniversary the Equitable had paid to widows and 
orphans, directly and indirectly, since it received its first pre- 
mium, the vast sum of three hundred and ten million dollars. 
One might get a more picturesque effect could he see all 
this treasure expressed in cathedrals, churches, and hospitals; 
but the more noble view is in the rebuilding of shattered 
homes, in the answer it makes to the cry of the children. 

Now, I do not mean to say that Mr. Hyde did really see 
the end from the beginning, my personal opinion being that 
he builded better than he knew; but that he was absolutely 
dominated by the thought that mighty results were to follow 
the work he had in hand, I do not doubt. 

In short, Mr. Hyde believed in life insurance. It was his 
ruHng passion. He sought its extension with the devotion of 
an ascetic who clings to his cavern in the rock. It was more 
than a business, vastly more; it was a faith, a cult. In all 
the years that I knew him he was a man of one work, he was 
absorbed by one idea. Thus it was that he so impressed him- 
self on the incidental interviewer, and on the business com- 
munity in which he mingled. Dominated himself by the 
life insurance idea, he speedily brought other men to his way 
of thinking. The agent whom he sought to enlist in his ser- 
vice, but who questioned the future of the Society, had his 
doubts removed by a five minutes' talk with Mr. Hyde. 
Yea, more, for the agent in turn became an enthusiast, and 
no longer needed a showing of company achievement, for he, 
too, could look with confidence toward the future, and win 
success by pointing to the glory that was to come. 

Looking far back to that day in autumn, I can see now the 
manager as he talked of his work ; the swaying of the lithe 
body, the poise of head, the swing of arm, — for he was all ac- 
tion, — the quiet and confident tone. I remember distinctly 
that I called on him thinking that the young Equitable was 
building in the sand, and I left him with the impression that 
its foundation was rock. CHARLES D. Lakey. 



RESOLUTIONS 

The resolutions adopted by the Board of Directors of the 
Equitable Society, in reference to the death of Mr. Hyde, 
and the resolutions adopted by the agents of the Society, 
have been quoted in the foregoing sketch. For many years 
Mr. Hyde refused a great number of pressing invitations to 
become identified with the management of many important 
corporations and business enterprises. His absorbing interest 
in the Equitable prompted him to this course. The excep- 
tions to this rule were made long after the Equitable had 
been ^firmly established as one of the largest and strongest of 
the life companies, and even then his identification with most 
of the companies of which he became a director may be 
traced, directly or indirectly, to the fact that by such a 
connection he felt that the best interests of the Equitable 
Society would be served. 



THE MERCANTILE TRUST COMPANY 

At a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Mercantile Trust 
Company, held on Wednesday, May 17, 1899, the following resolu- 
tions, reported from the Executive Committee, were unanimously 
adopted : 

Resolved, That this Board desires to record an expression of its 
sorrow at the irreparable loss caused by the death of Henry 
Baldwin Hyde. 

Mr. Hyde was the founder and for many years had been one of 

204 



APPENDIX 205 

the most highly respected and valued Directors of this Company. 
His wisdom and financial sagacity were supplemented by industry 
and indomitable energy. These active qualities which marked his 
character, and by which he was best known, would have been suffi- 
cient to make him famous in the world of business. But they were 
united with an integrity and a wise conservatism which made him a 
safe as well as an eminently efficient adviser. 

By Mr. Hyde's death a power for usefulness, progress, and good 
has been lost, and the place which has been left vacant is one that 
cannot be filled. And it was further 

Resolved, That these resolutions be entered upon the minutes of 
the Board, and a copy be forwarded to the family of the deceased. 

Ernest R. Adee, 

Secretary. 



THE WESTERN NATIONAL BANK 

At a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Western National 
Bank of the city of New York, held at the Banking House, No. 
15 Nassau Street, on Wednesday, May 3, 1899, the President an- 
nounced the death of Henry B. Hyde, a member of the Board, 
whereupon the following resolution was unanimously adopted : 

Resolved, That in the death of Mr. Hyde the Bank has lost a zeal- 
ous and powerful supporter, and the members of the Board an 
intelligent, genial, and honorable associate. That, furthermore, they 
desire to bear testimony to their high appreciation of the qualities 
which not only made him a leader among men of affairs, but en- 
deared him to the hearts of those with whom he was brought into 
business relations. Possessed of a mind of more than ordinary 
grasp and activity, of resistless energy, of great but laudable ambi- 
tion, he had, in addition, a heart full of generous impulses and 
always inclined to kindly action. Although ever ready to battle for 
a cause which seemed to him just, he cherished no malice, and died, 
as he declared in his last hours, at peace with all men. As a man 
of business, successful in his sphere beyond all competitors, as a 
public-spirited citizen, as an earnest and loyal friend, he has left a 



2o6 APPENDIX 

place which will not be filled during the lives of his associates, and 
they thus put on record their deep appreciation of his sterling 
character. V. P. Snyder, 

President. 



THE MERCANTILE SAFE DEPOSIT COMPANY 

In recording on these minutes the death of Mr. Henry B. Hyde^ 
Vice-President of this Company, the Trustees desire to express their 
deep sense of loss ; a loss not alone to this Company and to the 
Board of Trustees, but also to each one of them personally. 

Mr. Hyde possessed in an eminent degree a personal magnetism 
which drew most closely to him all those who were associated with 
him in his business enterprises. A man of magnificent ideas, with 
a mind quick to grasp and fully comprehend great undertakings, 
clear in judgment, prompt in action, and with a most sympathetic 
heart, he was in every sense of the word a strong man — strong in 
mind, strong in purpose, and strong in feelings. His great enter- 
prises, in their splendid success, stand as monuments to the memory 
of Mr. Hyde, but there are other monuments, not so public, not open 
to the view of the world, fully as high and much more lasting, which 
have been raised in the hearts of those who have felt his influence,, 
his fair-mindedness, and his kindness. 

Mr. Hyde was the founder of this Institution, was unfaiHng in his 
interest in its welfare, and was ever ready to help it by his advice 
and personal labors. In its early days, when the success of this 
enterprise seemed a problem, Mr. Hyde's confidence in its future 
never faltered, and he used all the means at his command to start it 
firmly on its successful course. No matter how important or en- 
grossing his other labors might be, he was ever ready to suggest or 
advise in matters concerning this business, and the great success of 
this Institution is, unquestionably, largely if not entirely due to his 
interest and advice. 

This Board would also convey to Mrs. Hyde and her family an 
expression of its heartfelt sympathy with them in their deep sorrow. 

Lyman Rhoades, 

President. 



APPENDIX 207 

THE SECURITY SAFE DEPOSIT COMPANY 

At a meeting of Directors of the Security Safe Deposit Company, 
held this day, May 4, 1899, in Boston, the following Resolutions 
were unanimously passed: 

Resolved^ That it is with sorrow that we have heard of the death 
of our associate and Vice-President, Henry B. Hyde, the founder 
of this Company, and the active promoter of its interests. 

In paying tribute to his memory, we testify to his high character 
as a man, his eminent ability in business affairs, his great sagacity 
and untiring industry, his superb qualities of leadership, and his 
wonderful personality, which have given him an elevated rank among 
the prominent men of affairs of this age. 

As the originator of The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the 
United States, and the directing spirit of its growth and develop- 
ment, he gave life insurance throughout this country and the world 
a new impetus, which has raised it to a still higher place among the 
protective institutions of the century. In this respect alone, as a 
man of genius in the theoretical and practical apphcation of the 
principles of life insurance, he has been recognized as the leading 
man in the world in the affairs of that institution. 

Resolved^ That we express our sympathy to the family of Mr. 
Hyde, and to his fellow-officials in The Equitable Life Assurance 
Society, and forward to them a copy of these Resolutions. 

Nathan Warren, E. M. McPherson, 

Secretary, President. 



THE MISSOURI SAFE DEPOSIT COMPANY 

At a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Missouri Safe 
Deposit Company, convened this fourth day of May, for the pur- 
pose of taking action on the death of Mr. Henry B. Hyde, the 
following resolutions were adopted : 

Whereas, God in his inscrutable wisdom has seen fit to remove 
from the scene of his earthly activities our co-director and friend, 
Henry B. Hyde; Therefore be it 



2o8 APPENDIX 

Resolved, That the unerring judgment and masterly qualities of 
mind, which placed him in the foremost ranks of the strong men of 
his day and generation, will be grievously missed from the counsels 
of our board; that we deeply mourn and deplore his loss; And be 
it further 

Resolved, That we extend to the bereaved family our heartfelt 
sympathy in their sorrow, and that a copy of these resolutions be 
sent to them as a memorial of our respect to the memory of the 
deceased, and a further copy be spread upon the minutes of this 
meeting. 

J. S. Kendrick, D. K. Ferguson, 

Secretary, President, 



At the time of his death, Mr. Hyde was a Director in the 
Union Pacific Railway Company, the Western Union Tele- 
graph Company, the Westinghouse Electric Company, the 
Coney Island and Brooklyn Railroad Company, and the 
Brooklyn City and Newtown Railroad Company. 

The following is an extract from the Annual Report of the 
Directors of the Union Pacific Railroad : 

THE UNION PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY 

Your Directors regret to report the death of Mr. Henry B. Hyde, 
a member of the Board, which occurred on May 2, 1899. His loss 
will long be felt in the corporation and financial world, in which he 
was a prominent figure, having founded and developed the Equitable 
Life Assurance Society of the United States, which stands as a monu- 
ment to his force, character, and skill. His son, Mr. James H. Hyde 
of New York, was elected to fill the vacancy. 



APPENDIX 209 

THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY 

A distinct misfortune befell the community in the death of Mr. 
Hyde. His indomitable will and untiring energy built up one of 
the largest life assurance societies of his time. 

Its success was chiefly attained by the public confidence in its 
integrity and stabihty which his high business and personal qualities 
inspired, and he was the means by which the dependents of a multi- 
tude of policy-holders felt the beneficence of a secure and liberal 
provision against the calamities of accident and old age. 

His unsparing devotion to the achievements of the high purpose 
he set before him made too early a sacrifice of the strength that 
should have carried him to a riper age and even fuller honors than 
those that he enjoyed. The respect that his colleagues ungrudgingly 
gave him and the admiration of his friends and acquaintances made 
him an example to be copied by all to whom the behest of duty is 
the first rule of life. 

We, his fellow-directors of the Western Union Telegraph Company, 
add our tribute to his high qualities of mind and character, and 
resolve that a suitably engrossed copy of this minute be sent by the 
ofi&cers of the company to Mrs. Hyde and her family, with the assur- 
ance of our sincere condolence in their bereavement. 

A. R. Brewer, Thomas T. Eckert, 

Secretary. President. 



Appropriate action was taken by the Directors of the 
other companies mentioned upon the announcement of Mr. 
Hyde's death. 

Resolutions were adopted and letters of condolence were 
received from a great number of the various State organiza- 
tions of Equitable Agents, and from the General Agents in 
charge of the Society's foreign branches all over the world. 

The following resolutions are from two of the independent 
associations of life underwriters : 



2IO APPENDIX 

THE MINNESOTA ASSOCIATION OF UNDERWRITERS 

Whereas, The Minnesota Association of Life Underwriters of 
the City of St. Paul, in the State of Minnesota, having heard with 
regret and sorrow of the death in New York City, on May 2, 1899, 
of Henry Baldwin Hyde, the founder and for many years the presi- 
dent of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States ; 
and 

Whereas, The relations of Mr. Hyde to the beneficent institution 
of life insurance generally, not only in his own country but through- 
out the world, were so intimate and valuable as to demand some- 
thing more than an ordinary recognition of their worth on the occur- 
rence of their untimely termination ; Therefore be it 

Resolved, That this, The Minnesota Association of Life Under- 
writers of the City of St. Paul hereby records its unanimous expres- 
sions of sincere regret at the death of Mr. Hyde, together with its 
deep appreciation of his moral worth so conspicuously reflected 
throughout his entire business career. 

Resolved, That recognition is hereby publicly and permanently 
made of the influence exerted upon the institution of life insurance 
by the lofty character of Mr. Hyde as a man, and his strict obser- 
vance as the responsible official of a great representative organization 
of the highest principles of business integrity in the conduct of its 
affairs. 

Resolved, That the Secretary of this Association be requested to 
forward a copy of these resolutions to the President of the Equi- 
table Life Assurance Society, and to Mr. James H. Hyde, the son 
of the deceased. 

Frank F. Loomis, Franklin T. Parlin, 

Secretary. President. 



THE LIFE UNDERWRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NEBRASKA 

At the regular monthly meeting of the Life Underwriters' Associa- 
tion of Nebraska, held at Omaha, Nebraska, June 5, 1899, the 
undersigned committee was appointed to draft resolutions expres- 



APPENDIX 211 

sive of the great loss we, as life underwriters, have sustained in the 
death of Henry B. Hyde, President of the Equitable Life Assurance 
Society of the United States, and of our profound sympathy with 
his family, and was instructed to forward a copy of these resolutions 
to the family. 

A kind and merciful Father has called to his home a cherished 
son ; a loving Parent has drawn closer to his presence an idolized child. 

To you, his dear ones, the loss you have sustained in the death of 
husband and father is indeed irreparable, and we, his humble pro- 
fessional followers, extend our heartfelt condolence and sympathy. 

Let the knowledge that the memory of Henry B. Hyde will live 
not only in your own gentle hearts, but in those of all who knew 
him, assuage your grief. 

This great and good man, so devoted to his noble calling, who 
exercised his powerful intellect, his indomitable energy, his marked 
executive ability, for the advancement of his profession, achieved 
the most wonderful success during his life, and rendered possible 
the marvelous growth of the life insurance companies of America ; 
and now that his eyes and lips are closed in death, his example will 
incite to acts of emulation the army of fellow-workers and admirers 
who tearfully mourn his loss. 

To you whom Henry B. Hyde loved so tenderly let the know- 
ledge that ''he is not dead, but gone before," bring comfort to your 
aching hearts. 

William Henry Brown, President. H. R. Gould. 

James E. Ebersol, Secretary, M. E. Rohrer. 

H. D. Neely, Chairman. John Sylvan Brown. 

Simon Goetz. 



ST. MARK'S CHURCH OF ISLIP, LONG ISLAND 

At a meeting of the Vestry of St. Mark's Church in Islip, held 
Sunday, May 7, 1899, the following preamble and resolutions were 
adopted : 

Whereas, Our late associate, Henry B. Hyde, has passed away, 
it becomes us to pay tribute to his memory. 



212 APPENDIX 

Resolved, That we have lost a counselor we cannot replace, and 
a friend who was ever faithful. 

His memory will remain as a bright example and a stimulating 
influence for all that is best. 

Resolved, That a copy of this expression of our sentiments be 
transmitted to Mrs. Hyde, with the assurance of our tender sym- 
pathy for her and her children. 

John H. Vail, 

Clerk, 



HINTS AND MAXIMS FROM CIRCULARS 
TO AGENTS 

Mr. Hyde's circulars to agents were in the highest sense 
original, but he never hesitated to utilize the thoughts of 
others, or to accept assistance from his associates. His aim 
was not to make new or original assertions, but to impress 
the truth upon his readers. He iterated and reiterated the 
same thought in varying language, often quoting the maxim 
of Samuel Johnson that men need reminding rather than 
instruction. The following extracts are from circulars to 
agents. 

January, 1870 

Be very particular about the class of risks presented to the 
Society. Much of our future success depends upon the faithfulness 
of our agents in this respect. Agents should not be willing to intro- 
^duce every applicant who can be hurried through the hands of a 
medical examiner. They should feel that much of the responsibility 
rests upon them and act accordingly. 

February i, 187 1 

Let the problem be to produce a given result in your agency. 
Consider all the present means of accomplishing it; go out of the 
old ruts ; think it over deeply ; invent new ways ; choose the best 
plan; develop it distinctly; weigh every point; when approved, 
change your anxious thought to determined action, and press through 
all discouragement ; and if your energy increase in the same ratio 
that obstacles thicken around you, you will, as a rule, accomplish 
your purpose. 

213 



214 



APPENDIX 



February I, 1871 

It may be that you do not think enough — that you are not thor- 
oughly awake. Some men go all through life half asleep ; others, 
until some tremendous event awakens them and they develop their 
latent energies : and then the world admires and respects what is 
called their genius. Let us give a name to this awakening and de- 
veloping power. Call it pressure. Pressure makes those of us who 
are successful, what we are. We all yield to it and obey it ; and we 
would that your love for the Equitable, your recollections of the 
glorious victories won under its banner, and your responsibility as 
co-workers in its service and supporters of its reputation in the future, 
should so press upon you that every latent power of body and mind 
should be aroused and perfectly developed in the discharge of the 
trust committed to your care. 

December i, 1871 

Work regularly, and devote a specific time to your work. The 
desultory man, who mixes his business up with all his other avoca- 
tions, may do business ; the agent who devotes all his time to the 
one thing, " this one thing I do," and turns neither to the right hand 
nor the left, but works regularly and indefatigably, must do it. 

October i, 1872 

Watch your record, and the moment your business begins to 
droop, make use of all proper expedients to arrest the decline. Do- 
not suffer it to get so low as to be almost beyond control before 
beginning the effort to force it up. 

October i, 1872 

It is a most important secret of our business never to let one 
month run behind its predecessor ; and it will be found that money, 
time, and influence expended at the moment when business begins 
to flag will save far heavier expenditures which would be found 
necessary to bring it up if too long neglected. You will find it easy 
in this way to effect a constant increase in the volume of new 
business. 



APPENDIX 



215 



March 7, 1874 

Let US hear from each and every one of you, and know that the 
old invincible spirit prevails. 

December 15, 1875 

A man who walks against time accomphshes more than one who 
starts out for a morning stroll. He turns neither to the right nor to 
the left ; takes not only a longer but a quicker step ; and, if he loses 
a little at one point, strains every nerve to make it up farther on. 

January i, 1880 

A man to succeed in any given work must have tact, combined 
with that energy that " knows no such word as fail " ; but in addition 
to this, he must conduct his business in such a manner as to give the 
most ample opportunity for the full display of his powers ; and in 
■order to meet with a great success must utilize every influence within 
his reach, and make it work with him to consummate the desired 
object. A man accomplishes most by his own individual work, but 
if he can control the labor of others, he may materially supplement 
his individual work. 

Compass all the obstacles, discouragements, and failures that you 
meet with. Make up your mind whether or not you are willing to 
put the intelligence and energy into the work that will cause you to 
rise superior to all hindrances. If the odds seem overwhelming, it 
is better to give it up before you begin and take some other kind of 
business more suited to your faint-hearted purposes ; but if, with your 
experience of the past and the recollection of the failures you have 
made in individual cases, you beheve that you can do your work 
more skilfully in the future, and while marking out even a bolder 
course, avoid many of the disasters of the past, — if you have real 
pluck in you,— you are the man we want to do business with, and to 
whom we desire to say a few words touching the prosecution of your 
work. 

So great has competition become, and so vigorously has the busi- 
ness of life assurance been pushed in all quarters, that in order to 
succeed you must rise earlier, sit up later, and work harder and more 
skilfully than those around you. 



2i6 APPENDIX 

The older life assurance agents throughout the country, who are 
familiar with this Society's history, know that its success is largely 
owing to its appreciation of the value of the services of the life assur- 
ance agent. It has done more to define and protect the rights of life 
assurance agents than all the other companies in the country com- 
bined. We beHeve the Society is universally popular among life 
assurance agents, and that to-day it has in its service the best men 
engaged in this business. 

May I, 1880 

Our corps of agents is such as no other company can boast of. It 
is a source of envy to our competitors and of pride to us. 

We want you to partake of the same spirit that inspires the man- 
agement in their labors to advance the interests of the Society, and 
maintain its 'position at the head of American life assurance com- 
panies as the strongest and most popular of all. We must not rest 
on past or present successes, for he who does will lose momentum 
and fall behind. 

June 2, 1880 

In order to ascertain if the business of life assurance is worth the 
exertion, find out the result by computation of the value in capital 
of the annual income from your renewal commissions. Calculate 
how much money invested in good securities would produce an 
equal revenue. Estimate this on an amount of business that can be 
done by the proper cultivation of your territory, and you will find 
that the results are such as to justify the efforts which we call upon 
you to put forth. 

August 30, 1880 

Agents who have been connected with the Society for a long 
time, and are familiar with the history of life assurance during the 
last quarter of a century, know that the Equitable was the first 
company which gave to the agents their rights in black and white, 
and which gave them a fair written contract, so that their rights 
could not be ignored. The Equitable is the company which has 
given the agent his proper place, and has given him the credit 
which belongs to him of right as the most important factor in the 
building up of a life assurance company. 



APPENDIX 217 

As a result of the course pursued by the Equitable, our agents 
have felt very closely identified with every interest of the company ; 
they have shared the same anxieties and pleasures experienced by 
the officers, and with them have contributed to the growth of the 
Society and watched its unequaled progress, year by year. 

It is this vital personal interest in the Equitable, on the part of its 
agents and officers, which has made the company what it is to-day. 

The power of money is great, but it cannot go into the market and 
buy or control the forces which contribute to such a success as has 
been achieved by the Equitable Life Assurance Society; and if in 
the future the agents and officers of the company lose this living, 
personal interest, and fail to be animated by the example of those 
who have occupied the field before them, from that time the tide 
will turn, and the decadence of the company will begin. Let us, 
then, be true to ourselves, and keep our reputation untarnished as 
faithful guardians of the company's interests during our time. 

December 31, 1881 

The work for the coming year is before you. Anything that is 
worth doing at all is worth doing well. Make up your mind, with 
all the lights you have, as to the ways and means that you should 
employ to push your business. Having decided, use the greatest 
system in conducting your agency. Order, regularity, and system 
are indispensable. Some men give up just at the time that success 
is waiting for them. But if, at the time at which nine men out of 
ten are ready to become utterly discouraged, you take hold with re- 
doubled energy, you will overcome all obstacles ; in the majority of 
cases you will succeed in accomplishing your purpose, if it is a wise 
one and has been carefully thought out. 

December 15, 1883 

The lesson to be learned from our experience is that it does not 
pay to lag behind and come in last. 

But it does pay to be connected with the company that has the 
best corps of intelligent, hard-working, positive, result-producing 
agents in the world. 

It does pay to be connected with a company where the officers 



2i8 APPENDIX 

are exhausting every energy, straining every nerve, to make crooked 
ways straight and rough places smooth ; where some of the officers 
have been experienced Hfe assurance agents, and try to do all in 
their power to comfort the agents in their troubles. 

Some agents of other companies know what it is, when pressing 
the enemy hard in the prosecution of their work, to have not only a 
fire in the front, which they expect and can take care of, but a con- 
stant fire in the rear, which they do not expect and cannot take care 
of, and ought not to have, and which they would not have if the 
officers of the company they represent knew their interest and were 
willing to work for it. 

January 28, 1885 

The successful life assurance agent takes great pride in his work ; 
lays his plans adroitly, and secures for service in his company the 
best men in his community. He is untiring ; is willing to do and 
dare anything in the interest of his company ; and his whole heart 
and soul are devoted to his business with an enthusiasm which 
knows no bounds. 

" There is no business in which a man can engage, without capi- 
tal, that will yield the pecuniary return which may be secured through 
a life assurance agency, managed with tact and energy." 

This is not the day of small things, but of great ones. We must 
set our standards high, giving to our tasks the necessary amount of 
labor and skill. 

November 28, 1885 

Words cannot express to you how deeply I feel the importance of 
improving the present opportunity. I recall to you the similar argu- 
ments I have used in the past, and appeal to your honest convictions 
as to whether our arduous toil, extraordinary and unremitting at times, 
has not met with its reward in the present position of the Society, 
its superiority over all other similar institutions in the world. As a 
body you have never failed me in times past, but have always come 
to the front at the critical moment. Many of my early associates in 
this work — good men and true — have passed away. The marvelous 
record of progress made in recent years, which was never before 
equaled by this company or any other, is your work. With hardly any 



APPENDIX 219 

exceptions, your future is identified with the Society as much as my 
own. It is my duty, in directing the movements of the Equitable, to 
endeavor to pursue such a course as will be of the greatest advantage 
to the Society, and necessarily of the greatest advantage to YOU. 

January 18, 1886 

The most brilliant achievements which have been wrought by 
man, and which have elicited the admiration of the world, have not 
been the results of dreamy, indolent genius, but the outcome of con- 
scientious, unremitting toil — restless activity of mind, which is not 
satisfied until the best ways and means are ascertained for the ac- 
complishment of the desired end ; and then the resistless force which 
carries them into successful execution. 

First, organize your work. No matter whether your territory ex- 
tends over several States, or several counties, or if it is confined to a 
single city or some country town ; organize your work and make up 
your mind whether or not you will endeavor to accomplish the task 
which is before you, and whether you will, by every means in your 
power, not only endeavor to succeed, BUT SUCCEED. 

In speaking to the best corps of agents in the world, I do not feel 
competent to advise you in every case how to work ; your own 
experience is the best guide : but it is safe to charge you to think 
before you act — take time to make up your mind as to the best 
means to be used to accomplish the desired result. It is worth the 
most serious reflection ; don't make any mistake about this. The 
Committee of Ways and Means is an important one. Time will not 
be wasted which is given to it. Make your foundations solid, and 
then there will be no fear for the superstructure if you are skilful 
and industrious. 

January, 1887 

Remember that to pause now and rest upon our laiurels would 
mean simply that we are willing, after reaching the foremost place, 
to see our rivals come up with and ultimately pass us. To stand 
still would be in effect to go back ; and it is contrary to the genius 
of the Society to take a backward step. 

Are you, the field officers of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, 



220 APPENDIX 

willing at this time to rest upon your laurels — that is to say, to have 
your laurels plucked off by your enemies? 

February i6, 1887 

To look back to the commencement of the Society in 1859, which 
was indeed a day of small things, and to recollect the difficulties and 
trials that have been successfully encountered and overcome by the 
officers and agents of this Society, cannot but give me confidence in 
the ability of the officers and agents to secure even greater victories 
in the future. We are doubly qualified by our experience at the 
home office to give the agents every possible assistance in their 
work. Union is strength. Let us show to the world that we are 
refreshed and strengthened by our success, and can with new and 
increasing ardor take hold of the great work before us. 

January, 1889 

At times, insurmountable obstacles may seem to block your path ; 
other companies may seek to hedge your way by their unwise action : 
but it is my experience that such things are only temporary. The 
officer of any life assurance company, when brought to book at the 
end of the year, and obliged to consider the outgo and income, sur- 
plus and liabilities, and to prepare the company's statement for pub- 
lication, is pretty sure to realize a sense of the responsibihty of the 
work in which he is engaged, and is not hkely to persevere for any 
length of time in a course which is sure to bring ruin and de- 
struction upon his company. His inexperience may change to bitter 
experience, if the conduct of his company is not marked by economy 
and common sense. *' Even a fool has his serious moments." 

January, 1889 

If the question is asked : What forces have raised the Equitable 
to its position as the leading life assurance company of the world? 
the answer is : That it furnishes a plain, simple contract of assurance, 
containing valuable advantages not to be found in the contracts of 
any other company ; that its dealings with its patrons are liberal and 
just ; that it does not seek for gains to be made by harsh technicali- 
ties ; and that its management is wise and conservative, as is shown 



APPENDIX 221 

by the fact that it now holds a surplus larger than the surplus of any 
other life assurance company in this country or in Europe. 

September 25, 1889 

Thirty years ago (in September, 1859) we had upwards of six 
hundred thousand dollars of assurance in force; to-day we have 
upwards of six hundred millions. 

Thirty years ago we had upwards of one hundred thousand dol- 
lars of assets ; to-day we hold upwards of one hundred millions. 

Then we had little or no surplus ; now we have between twenty 
and twenty-five miUions. 

Then not one of our policies had matured, and not a single death 
claim had been paid ; now we can point to many thousands of 
beneficiaries who have been relieved from want, or who have already 
realized liberal profits on substantial investments. 

Then indisputable assurance was unthought of; now there are 
thousands who, recognizing the superiority of such assurance, have, 
first, by their example, and second, in the results of their pohcies, 
testified to its worth. 

November 25, 1889 

The Equitable has succeeded, not because it has been so guarded 
and restricted from without that it has been forced to deal fairly 
with its patrons, but because under a united and continuous man- 
agement it has sought to give its pohcy-holders the best assurance 
possible. It has consequently sought : 

First, To give the utmost security ; and 

Second, To confer the largest benefits ; and 

Third, To sweep aside every cumbersome restriction. 

It is therefore known as the originator of every important improve- 
ment in the business, and is preeminently noted for having invented 
the only system of assurance under which a full share of surplus is 
given to retiring living members. 

December 25, 1889 

It has been our aim in the past to offer to the public assurance 
based upon correct business and mathematical principles, and to 
have it free of any tricks, evasions, or equivocations ; and we are 



222 APPENDIX 

determined not to be diverted from this by any thoughtless or 
seemingly unscrupulous competitors. 

As I have said to you at times in the past, so long as envy loves 
a shining mark will the Equitable be the target for the arrows of its 
rivals and enemies. 

The work of the coming year is before you. If you have the 
grit and the backbone to overcome and rise superior to all the 
obstacles that obstruct your pathway ; the tact and good sense to 
make the most of all the facilities in your hands ; the system and 
ability to put every part of your field in the most perfect order ; the 
power to work when other men give up, until you get that '' second 
wind " and feel that '' second strength " which knows no fatigue : if 
you have these qualities, which I know so many of you possess in 
an eminent degree, coupled with the determination to outdo all your 
previous efforts, you will be able to write your part, and more than 
your part, of new business for the Equitable Life Assurance Society 
of the United States in the year 1890. 

December 25, 1889 

Truth as expressed in correct business principles is a fixed quan- 
tity, eternal in its character, and not susceptible to change. Those 
institutions which for ephemeral advantage depart from such prin- 
ciples are sure to pay the penalty in the end. Illustrations of this 
fact are to be found in great numbers in the history of life assurance 
companies during the last twenty-five years. We shall always do 
everything in our power consistent with sound legitimate methods 
to forward your interests. 

Ill-judged devices and reckless expenditure to obtain business 
must of necessity result in permanent injury, even if they seem to 
yield some temporary advantage. So far as this Society is concerned, 
it will continue to pursue a conservative and prudent but vigorous 
policy in the prosecution of its business ; and it will depend, as it 
can safely do, upon the intelligence, skill, and energetic action of its 
representatives in the field for maintaining in future the leading 
position which it now holds and has held for so many years in con- 
sequence of its refusal to be drawn by competition into unwise 
courses. 



APPENDIX 223 

October i, 1890 

In extending the beneficent influence of life assurance the mana- 
gers and agents of this Society have been more efficient and suc- 
cessful than the representatives of any other company ; but this is 
far from being all the good in this direction accomphshed by the 
Equitable ; for the influence of its example, and the success attained 
through the reforms introduced by it into the practice of life assur- 
ance, have stimulated other companies, and imitation of the plans 
and methods of the Equitable has been found by them to be an 
essential condition to success. Thus to the results achieved by the 
Equitable directly is to be added the influence which it has exerted 
indirectly upon life assurance at home and abroad. 

December i, 1890 

These results have been accomplished in the face of an unpar- 
alleled competition, without transcending the bounds of rigid con- 
servatism in all the departments of oiu: business — a conservatism 
which has always characterized the management of this Society. 
Nevertheless, we have met and successfully overcome competitors 
who have resorted to methods that would not be countenanced by 
any prudent business man in the management of his own affairs. 

January i, 1891 

No company or body of agents can long pursue practices that 
are frowned upon by honest public opinion. This is sometimes 
learned to the cost of those who aim to strike below the belt. 

A good beginning is half the battle. It will carry you right 
along through the year. On the other hand, if you should relax 
your efforts, and the results of January should be meager, it will be 
very difficult for you to recover the lost ground. Let there be no 
relaxation, therefore. Make the results of January exceed those of 
December. The good effects of such a beginning will be felt 
throughout the year. 

December 30, 1892 

While the reforms which have been introduced by the Equitable 
may have a tendency to reduce the amount of its annual business, 



224 APPENDIX 

we believe the business written will have better staying power, and 
that a larger proportion of it will be renewed and paid to the end. 



December 30, 1892 

The management of the Equitable pledges itself to endeavor to 
avoid the evil and injurious practices in the conduct of the business 
which have prevailed to a greater or less extent among many of the 
companies during past years, and which, we think, have been to 
the detriment both of the companies and their managers throughout 
the country. 

The great Dr. Johnson once said that mankind did not so much 
need to be instructed as to be reminded of what they already know. 
I want to repeat to the managers of the Equitable a number of 
things which they know as well as I do, but which it is for their 
good to remember. 

After a brief experience in this business, an intelhgent manager 
will ascertain that his interests are promoted by spending his ener- 
gies in pursuit of the business that will stick, even if it is harder to 
get, and even if he does not at the moment appear to be making 
as rapid progress. 

I want to impress one fact upon you — namely, that there is no 
antagonistic interest in this business. It is to your benefit that we 
should so conduct it that the policy-holders will be more than satis- 
fied with the management of the Society. 

We propose to place the Equitable in such a position as to make 
it increasingly easy for its agents to secure the best class of business, 
and thus make the Society more than ever the most profitable to 
represent. At the same time, we wish to have none but straightfor- 
ward, honorable men, who secure business by satisfactory methods. 
We do not wish the business of reliable agents to be hindered by 
the wrong methods of others. 

In conclusion, let me remind you that the best — indeed, the only 
way to make a good showing for yourselves and the Society during 
the coming year is to begin at the very beginning and keep up 
unremitting and energetic efforts until the end of the year ; to make 
every day count, and never to permit yourselves to rely upon the 
delusive hope that another month may restore what the preceding 



APPENDIX 225 

one has lost. Begin the new year aright ; pass new resolutions in 
the line of these suggestions, and keep them. In this manner you 
will mark the year 1893 as one of the most successful in the Society's 
history. 

1893 

The directors of the Society deem the quaHty of its risks and the 
economy of its management of far greater importance than the vol- 
ume of business transacted. 

The fact that the Equitable secures its enormous business at less 
cost than its principal competitors most significantly illustrates the 
pubHc appreciation of its merit. 

March 10, 1893 

There are only two ways for a life assurance company to write a 
big business: One is by the excessive use of money, which before 
long would so increase the expense that it would necessitate a 
reduction and in the end an aboHtion of dividends; and the other 
is by using the greatest possible economy, both in the home office 
and throughout all the agencies, so as to produce such an increase 
of surplus (which is the dividend-paying power) over all other com- 
panies that the agent in the field will be enabled the more easily to 
effect assurance through the intrinsic excellence of the company. 

We prefer the latter way, and beheve that by following it consis- 
tently we shall further alike the interests of the Society and its agents. 

Those of you who have been with the Society a long time must 
appreciate the feeling I have of the magnitude and importance of 
the work which has been accompHshed. You have the facts. I 
don't know what more you can need to enable you to take the lead- 
ing position in your business in your own field. 

March 8, 1894 

We point with satisfaction to the record which has been made in 
the economical management of the Society, and challenge any com- 
pany doing an approximate amount of new business to equal it. 
We are very sure that our managers and agents, as well as the great 
body of our policy-holders, will indorse and applaud the conserva- 



226 APPENDIX 

tive course pursued by the Equitable in 1893 and during previous 
years, resulting in the possession by the Equitable of a surplus so 
much larger than that of any other hfe assurance company. 

So far as the public is concerned, one lesson which this teaches 
is that a poHcy in such a company as the Equitable is one of the 
very few securities which can pass through a severe panic without 
endangering its value. Never before has the strength of the insti- 
tution of life assurance been exhibited in such bold rehef. The 
financial depression which marked the progress of the year afforded 
to business men conducting great enterprises material and opportu- 
nity for serious and intelhgent reflection, enabling them to make 
comparative estimates of the safety, stability, value, and results of 
different classes of investments, and to appreciate the more perma- 
nent and enduring investment in life assurance. In many instances, 
the stability of the former has been threatened, while in some cases 
there have been absolute collapses, resulting in wide-spread despair 
and suffering ; the latter has stood firm in every emergency, bringing 
relief in numerous instances to imperiled business and anxious in- 
vestors. The test was certainly a crucial one, and will turn the 
attention of thoughtful persons to the benefits of life assurance more 
than ever before. 

Another lesson that has been learned is that the confidence which 
men have felt heretofore in their ability to earn and safely accumu- 
late money, in spite of the changing conditions which attend all 
enterprises, has been rudely shaken by the commercial disasters of 
last year. Consequently, many men have begun to doubt their 
ability to take care of their dependents from the accumulation of 
their yearly savings, especially when the uncertainty of life is taken 
into consideration. This has led them to look more favorably than 
ever before on the assistance afforded by life assurance to secure the 
desired result. 

The public is also becoming better educated as to the merits of 
different companies, Intelhgent business men are rising above the 
idea that one company is just as good as another. I am convinced 
that the necessity which all commercial men have been under dur- 
ing the past twelve months of critically examining every class of 
security in which they have had any interest has led them to scru- 
tinize more carefully the different companies before applying for 



APPENDIX 



227 



policies. They have learned, consequently, that the Equitable, with 
its assets soHdIy invested, and with so large a surplus, is the com- 
pany to be preferred above all companies whose assets are less sol- 
idly invested and whose surplus is smaller. 

Again, the crisis we have just passed through has called the atten- 
tion of wealthy men particularly to the value of hfe assurance in 
settling up their estates. When the market value of securities is 
highest, when everything is easily sold, and lenders are anxious to 
keep money out instead of calling it in, when business is booming 
and enterprises are easily floated, men become intoxicated with suc- 
cess. At such times they do not think of obstacles, and are not 
easily persuaded of the expediency of having hfe assurance to pro- 
tect their estates in case of death. But they have been taught dur- 
ing the past year that times come when money cannot be borrowed ; 
when even the best securities cannot be sold except at a tremendous 
sacrifice; when estates cannot be settled up to advantage. Then 
their thoughts turn readily to hfe assurance, and they recognize the 
fact that perhaps the only asset they can rely upon absolutely for the 
settlement of their estates, in the event of their untimely death, is life 
assurance. Then they see clearly that the only investment which 
they can make which will become more valuable as the stringency 
increases in severity, and the only asset they can possess which 
will appreciate instead of depreciating at their death, is life 
assurance. 

March 8, 1894 

It is my opinion that the body of agents of the Equitable Life 
Assurance Society of the United States is not excelled in character 
and caliber by any other body of business men in the world, and the 
Society is to be congratulated upon the class of representatives 
it has. Some of us recall a time when the life assurance agent was 
not held in the esteem which he enjoys in these latter days. To- 
day he is regarded as the peer of any man in any business, and he 
has scattered the beneficent influences of life assurance so widely 
that his vocation is recognized as being in the first rank of honora- 
ble professions. The financial crisis enabled many of our mana- 
gers to illustrate to good men that many branches of business are 
uncertain, and to show them the advantages of life assurance as a 



228 APPENDIX 

profession. I count on a greater future for life assurance because 
of the high class of men now engaged in the business, and I can 
promise you that the Equitable will continually take the lead in 
weeding out those who by their acts bring reproach upon their pro- 
fession. I am convinced that the betterment of the business de- 
pends primarily on the employment of such men only as will not 
countenance dishonorable conduct; and if such men only are em- 
ployed, other questions will take care of themselves, for such repre- 
sentatives will not require the restraint of prohibitory regulations. 

December i, 1894 

Those managers and agents who literally comply with my orders, 
and send in their final accounts early in January, will stand high 
on the Equitable roll of honor, and have my warm friendship and 
thanks. 

At the end of the year I shall divide the good from the bad, 
and be governed in my future dealings with them by the records 
they have made in closing their accounts for the year. 

August 3, 1896 

In these hard times, when everybody is trying to get full value 
for every dollar he spends, you have, in canvassing for the Equitable, 
a great advantage over all other companies, from the fact that the 
Society has been managed with greater economy and skill. This is 
clearly shown by our having been able to lay up the largest surplus. 

August 3, 1896 

If you were handicapped by working for a poor company that had 
no record behind it, a great deal of your energy and vim would be 
wasted. But, as it is, you represent the most successful life assur- 
ance company in the world, and, consequently, have every advantage 
in your favor. I want you to appreciate this. 

October 2, 1896 

It is astonishing how much more a man can do if he has in his 
mind a definite object that he is striving to accomplish, than if his 



APPENDIX 229 

efforts lack purpose and concentration. In other words, if an agent 
makes up his mind to write $100,000 of new assurance in a month, 
he is certainly likely to write a larger amount than if he starts out 
with no definite aim, or if he is striving to write but one half that 
amount. It is an old saying that " Your arrow will fly higher if you 
aim at the sun than if you aim on a level with your eye." 

October 2, 1896 

The agents of the Society have great advantages, inherited from 
the agents who, thirty years ago, responded so well to the appeals 
then made to them. If they had lacked courage and enthusiasm, 
if they had deemed the odds too heavy against them and had given 
up the race, or drifted with the tide, or had been content barely to 
maintain the relative position which had then been attained, the 
great advantages you have to-day in the prosecution of your work 
would be lacking. We look to you at the present day to carry for- 
ward the work with the same spirit and determination which ani- 
mated those who represented the Society many years ago. 

November 4, 1896 

If we are alert to take hold of our work in earnest, to study all 
the questions appertaining to it, and to push it forward with energy 
and determination, we can make up for all the losses which we have 
experienced. The tide will turn, and success will attend our efforts. 

" There is a tide in the affairs of men 
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries." 

It is of no use now to think of the hard work that was unsuccess- 
ful, the business that has fallen off, and the loss of money that has 
come to almost every life assurance manager, as well as to every 
branch of commerce throughout the world. Let us turn the page 
on which are recorded our troubles, and seal it ; let us open a new 
account with a clean page, on which may be inscribed our future 
successes. 

When traveling thirty-odd years ago on the Mississippi River, I 



230 



APPENDIX 



took notice of the way the steamboat made some of its landings in 
the night. It ran as near as it could to the mud-bank and put out 
a long, narrow plank to the shore, torches being held on deck to 
light the way. The boat stopped but a moment. In that moment 
it was either " Go ashore " or '' Stay aboard," and if the night was 
rainy, the plank muddy and sHppery, the hesitating passenger was 
carried along as the boat went on its way, and there was no second 
opportunity for him to land. Men succeed in life who have been 
able to grasp the few opportunities that were held out to them. 

The following letter is quoted entire because it is the last 
circular not of a perfunctory character that bears Mr. Hyde's 
signature. 

January i, 1897 

A NEW year's letter TO THE MANAGERS OF THE EQUITABLE 
LIFE ASSURANCE SOCIETY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Gentlemen : We have made our adieus to the departed year with- 
out much regret, and standing now upon the threshold of a new 
year, scanning the horizon before us, we are impressed with the 
belief that we shall have opportunities during the coming days, 
weeks, and months of 1897 to accompHsh greater results than we 
have been able to secure during the depression which has prevailed 
for the past few years. 

An old writer says that " Nature is exacting and relentless." We 
all know that if we violate any of her laws punishment will come 
surely and swiftly ; no extenuating circumstances can palhate the 
crime. The business world is governed by similar principles. 
Cause and effect are clearly outlined on every hand. If a man has 
not wisely planned his course, has not thoughtfully provided for all 
contingencies, his failure is almost certain to come. 

I have seen men who possessed ability and capacity for hard 
work, and yet they produced no valuable business results. Is it 
that their minds are not intent upon their work? Or did they 
follow it only as a necessity, their pride and pleasure being allied to 
other matters? Were they destitute of clearly defined business 
plans? Did they lack persistency and continuity of purpose? 
Their failure answers " Yes " to all these questions. 



APPENDIX 



231 



There are other men who are called successful ; people sometimes 
envy them. How have these men attained their successes? By 
system, by order, by incessant thought and industrious work. Were 
these men devoted to pleasure? Were they more fond of amusement 
and entertainment than of their business? No! On the contrary, 
when others were enjoying their ease and recreation, they devoted 
the time to laying out plans for the next day and for the future. 

You may say that this is a hard life. It may or it may not be 
hard, according to the disposition of the individual. The successful 
man derives more pleasure and real satisfaction from his hard-work- 
ing life than ever comes to the man who neglects his business and 
suffers the penalty which such neglect brings. If you do not like 
this course of life, you may think it to be a severe penalty that you 
pay for success ; but yet, in the great rush of modem affairs, this 
penalty must always be paid before a great success can be achieved 
in any branch of business life. 

The beginning of a new year is a proper time for reflection 
respecting the course which you shall pursue. The first thing that 
may occur to some of you will be whether it is wise, after all, to 
continue your efforts in the field of life assurance. It is certainly 
your duty to abandon the business unless you have a love and 
capacity for it, unless you feel that you *' have it in you " to succeed, 
and are also willing to devote to it your entire time and energies. 
If you depart from the field, there will remain nothing for us to do 
but to bid you an affectionate good-by, while we go on with those 
who have cast their lives and fortunes in the glorious cause to 
which we are devoted. 

To those who are on our side, and on whom we depend in the 
business strife that is before us, I want to sa)^ a few words : 

Our obhgations for the support of our families and the education 
of our children, our desires to enjoy the comforts, not to say the 
luxuries, of life as we go along, the importance of having a capital 
" to bank on " in conducting our business, and also the hope which 
we all have to lay up something for the consolation of our old 
age — all these things urge the necessity of making to-day such plans 
as shall insure the results which I desire each of you to attain. 
While you are yet in health and strength, and able to work hard, 
you must decide the question whether or not you will strive to attain 



232 



APPENDIX 



the position of the successful man. You must now make a choice 
between the two. If you neglect this, sickness or death, coming 
unexpectedly, may rob you of the abiHty to profit by my advice. 
Fortunately, most of our managers are on the right side of the line, 
and deserve my congratulations. 

I want you to find more enjoyment in your business than in any- 
thing else ; then it will not be irksome to devote a greater part of 
your time to its prosecution ; indeed, it will be easier to disengage 
yourself from all other things and press forward to this alone. It 
is but a step from love for the business in which you are successful 
to an enthusiasm for it. The man of one idea, whose course is 
marked by enthusiasm, is a power in the world. All leaders, both 
in great and small affairs, have been men capable of inspiring 
enthusiasm in their followers. Remember this when, at the head of 
your agents, you desire to produce great results. Prove to them 
your capability as a leader, and don't lie in the ditch, like the Wag- 
oner, and cry to Jupiter for help. If you do, you will probably get 
the answer that he did : " The gods help those who help themselves.'^ 

Your time is your capital in business. Learn to be economical 
of it and dexterous in the use of it. If, at the close of each day, 
you will think over what you have done, and will note how much 
time you have wasted so far as any desirable results are concerned, 
you may be led to keep a stricter watch upon the hours of the next 
day as they slip by. You can do a great work if you will never let 
a day pass without gathering some valuable result, and you will be 
surprised, at the end of the year, by the progress made. 

I want you to spend some time in personally canvassing your 
district. You ought to write more applications than are written by 
any of your agents. I am not able to understand how a manager 
can teach his agents to canvass successfully for life assurance unless 
he himself can canvass for it. If you find that you are not able to 
become a master of the business, you had better quit it, for the 
stream can never rise higher than its source. 

I want you to make the most of such mental endowments (per- 
sonal peculiarities, if you choose so to call them) as have in times 
past brought about your greatest successes. Sometimes agents who 
have recently engaged in the business of Hfe assurance feel great 
embarrassment with regard to approaching the most important men 



APPENDIX 233 

in their community in reference to assuring their lives. Some fear 
one thing, some another; some consult their fears on all occasions, 
and hardly dare to go forward. But if they will take good heart 
and go forward resolutely, many things that they have feared will 
vanish. The lions standing in their pathway will retreat as they 
advance. Do not think that other men succeed better than you do 
because they have greater ability; it may be that you can do as 
well if you work as hard. 

" The heights by great men reached and kept 
Were not attained by sudden flight ; 
But they, while their companions slept, 
Were toihng upward in the night." 

I hesitate to give you detailed advice regarding the best method 
of conducting yoiur business, but desire you to read most carefully 
the book entitled " A Life Assurance Agent's Guide to Success," 
inclosed herewith. I had a good deal to do with the preparation 
of this book twenty-five years ago, and I have never read it without 
feeling refreshed by new impulses. 

During the coming year you must take greater pains to hold the 
old business of the Society; this naturally comes under the charge 
of the cashier and office force, but you should exhaust every means 
at your command to see that every renewal receipt is taken and 
paid for by the assured. 

Nothing is of greater importance for the success of your agency 
than a prompt delivery of new policies. Some of our most successful 
agents place at least eighty-five per cent, of their business at the time 
the application is written, by the use of binding receipts. This is most 
desirable, and agents who have learned to do their business in this 
manner would not, under any circumstances, retiu-n to the old method 
of always waiting to place the policy after it has been issued. If, 
however, a binding receipt is not used when the application is 
written, the next best time to close the transaction is immediately 
after the policy is issued. In other words, learn your fate by deliv- 
ering the policy or ascertaining that you cannot do so. By follow- 
ing this advice, you will not only reduce to the minimum your not- 



234 APPENDIX 

taken-out policies, but avoid that condition of mind into which an 

agent gets who carries a policy in his pocket week after week, hoping 

against hope that he may be able to deliver it, but without the 

courage to force the issue. 

Sincerely desiring that you may enjoy a Happy New Year, and 

meet with an encouraging success in your business, I remain, 

Very cordially yours, 

H. B. Hyde, 

President. 
New York, January i, 1897, 



MR. HYDE'S LIFE-WORK 

BEING A RECORD OF FORTY YEARS OF 
THE EQUITABLE SOCIETY 

As nearly as can be ascertained from the early records, there 
were thirty-two life companies operating in the United States 
in 1859 when the Equitable was organized. Of these, twenty- 
four were transacting business in New York and Massachu- 
setts, and with these the infant society came at once into 
active competition. It occupied, therefore, at that time, the 
twenty-fifth position among the active companies of the coun- 
try. But its increase in financial strength, measured by its 
growth in surplus, was so rapid that at the end of the year 
1875 there were only five other companies that had a larger 
surplus. In 1876 there were only three; in 1877 but two; in 
1878 but one. In 1880 the Equitable stood firsts with a 
surplus larger than that of any other company in the world. 
And the preeminent position then reached has been maintained 
uninterruptedly from that day to this. 

Mr. Hyde died nearly three months before the Society's 
fortieth birthday, but upon the completion of the Society's 
Annual Statement at the beginning of the year he knew 
approximately the figures which would be reported to the 
directors and agents on that anniversary. They were the fol- 
lowing ; 

235 



236 APPENDIX 



An Unparalleled Record 
On its Fortieth Anniversary, July 26, 1899 

THE EQUITABLE 

LIFE ASSURANCE SOCIETY 

OF THE UNITED STATES 

has on its books Outstanding Assurance for over 

$1,000,000,000, 

which is more than twice the amount accumulated by 
any other company in the world during a similar period 
of its history. Its Assets amount to over 

$270,000,000, 

which is more than twice the amount held by any other 
company in the world on its fortieth anniversary. Its 
Surplus amounts to over 

$60,000,000, 

which is also more than twice the amount held by any 
other company at the end of its fortieth year. 



The following tables (in which the record is carried up to 
the close of the year 1899) illustrate the growth of the Society 
from the beginning under its founder's management. None 
of these figures illustrate more pointedly the steady and unin- 
terrupted character of that growth than the first of these 
tables. 







APPENDIX 


237 




GROWTH 


IN ASSETS AND SURPLUS 


December. Assets. 


Surplus. 


December 


Assets. 


Surplus. 


1859 


$117,102 


$96,154 


1880 


$41,108,602 


$6,957,855 


i86o 


162,618 


106,174 


1881 


44,308,542 


7,476,729 


1861 


210,636 


119,836 


1882 


48,025,751 


8,078,495 


1862 


324.013 


156,995 


1883 


53.030,582 


9.1^5.969 


1863 


584.714 


258,321 


1884 


58,161,926 


10,483,617 


1864 
1865 
1866 
1867 


1. 125.381 
1,648,486 
3.077.788 
5.125,423 


SI5.81I 
305.704 
361,341 


1885 

1886 

1887 
000 


66,553.387 
75.510,473 
84,378,905 


13,862,239 

16,355.876 

18,104,255 


1868 


7,721,077 


350,928 


1888 


95,042,923 


20,794,715 


1869 


10,510,824 


319.755 


1889 


107,150,309 


22,821,074 


1870 


13,236,025 


408,434 


1890 


119.243.744 


23.740,447 


1871 


16,174,825 


837.874 


189I 


136,198,518 


27,792,980 


1872 


19.695.053 


1,228,529 


1892 


153,060,052 


31,189,815 


1873 


22,972,252 


1.549.746 


1893 


169,056,397 


32,366,750 


1874 


25.981.757 


2,003,331 


1894 


183,544.310 


35.979.803 


1875 


29.039.090 


2,602,305 


1895 


201,009,388 


40,624,012 


1876 


31.734.934 


3.436,955 


1896 


216,773.947 


43.277.179 


1877 


33.530,655 


4,105,003 


1897 


236,876,308 


50.543.175 


1878 


35,454,092 


4,742,531 


1898 


258,369.299 


57,310,489 


1879 


37,366,842 


5.550,395 


1899 


280,191,287 


61,117,478 



GROWTH AT TEN-YEAR INTERVALS 



IN OUTSTANDING 


IN PAYMENTS 


ASSURANCE 


TO POLICY-HOLDERS 


Dec. 31, 1859 . . . $1,144,000 


Dec. 31, 1859 . . . Nothing 


1869 . . . 134,223,861 


1869 . . . $6,100,548 


1879 . . . 162,357,715 


1879 . . . 51,814,313 


1889 . . . 631,016,666 


" 1889 . . . 130,742,128 


" 1899 . . , 1,054,416,422 


1899 . . . 323,190,730 


IN ANNUAL RECEIPTS, 


IN TOTAL BENEFITS TO 


OR INCOME 


POLICY-HOLDERS 1 


Dec. 31, 1859 • . • $22,707 


Dec. 31, 1859 . . . $117,102 


" 1869 . . . 6,268,392 


1869 . . . 16,611,372 


1879 . . . 8,347,081 


1879 • • • 89,181,155 


1889 . . . 30,393,288 


1889 . . . 237,892,437 


1899 . . . 53,878,201 


" 1899 . . . 603,382,017 



1 By Total Benefits to Policy-holders is meant the sum total of the payments 
made to them, and of funds held for their benefit. 



PORTRAIT STATUE OF MR. HYDE UNVEILED 

On the 2d of May, 1901, the directors of the Society assem- 
bled in the main corridor of the Equitable Building to witness 
the unveiling of the portrait statue of Mr. Hyde, designed by 
John Quincy Adams Ward, the sculptor of the Society's trade- 
mark " Protection," typifying the genius of life assurance 
guarding with shield and spear the widow and the orphan. 

President Alexander spoke as follows to the directors and 
others in attendance : 

Gentlemen of the Board of Directors and Friends of the 
Equitable Society: We meet to-day on the second anniversary 
of the death of a truly great man, to pay a tribute of love and respect 
to his memory by dedicating, in his honor, the portrait statue exe- 
cuted by the sculptor so well known to us all, John Quincy Adams 
Ward. It is with affection and veneration that we thus perpetuate 
in bronze the form and features of our departed friend and leader. 
But he has himself impressed his character and his genius upon the 
imperishable fabric of this great institution of beneficence which he so 
fitly named at its very birth the Equitable Life Assurance Society of 
the United States. 

It is no disparagement of living men to say that Henry Baldwin 
Hyde, the founder of this Society, was the greatest constructor and 
developer, in the field chosen by him for his work, that has ever been 
known in this country. 

He not only founded the company which he lived to see surpass 
all others in strength and usefulness, but he inspired others with his 
own zeal and enthusiasm, so that the undertaking molded and 
brought to perfection by him should continue with ever-increasing 
force and effect for all time. 

238 



APPENDIX 239 

He was not content with rearing an immense financial corporation 
based on the soundest and most enduring principles, but undertook 
and successfully wrought out a complete revolution in the methods 
of the life assurance business, eradicating evils which had become 
habitual in the craft, and introducing reforms, all of which were so 
clearly equitable, just, and popular that the example set by the 
Society has become crystallized in the general practice of all com- 
panies asking for the confidence of the public. 

It was Mr. Hyde who first proved that the European field could 
be successfully invaded by an American company. It was under his 
administration that the policy contract was simplified and liberalized, 
making it intelligible to all, and stripping it of unnecessary legal 
technicalities. It was he who introduced the principle, now almost 
universal, of making policies indisputable after three years (a period 
since reduced to one), thus cutting off at one blow the possibility of 
much litigation and thus forcing the companies to be so careful at the 
outset that subsequent protective measures would become superfluous. 
It was he who made policies payable immediately on the death of the 
assured, instead of keeping the widow and the orphan anxiously wait- 
ing for settlement during periods varying from three to six months. 

These and many other innovations, all based on an honorable 
regard for the rights of others, were never conceived of until this 
master mind and far-reaching hand transformed the practice and 
character of the business, so that from an uncertain agency for good 
it has become a rock of reliance resorted to by a largely multiplying 
pubHc. 

The seed planted by Henry Baldwin Hyde in 1859 ^^s, in a little 
over forty years, become a mighty tree with branches sheltering many 
thousands of famihes, and year by year providing for multitudes 
otherwise bereft. From nothing, at the beginning, the thought and 
toil and indefatigable perseverance of this man of iron will and 
determined character have built and estabhshed a vast institution with 
invested funds of over three hundred millions, with an annual 
income of over fifty-eight millions, with outstanding assurances of 
over eleven hundred millions, with a surplus of over sixty-six mil- 
lions, and with a sound condition and an honorable record which 
promise an uninterrupted future of beneficence and renown. 

Proud as we are to erect to the unfading honor of such a man a 



240 



APPENDIX 



monument worthy of his singularly eminent career, we are still more 
proud to know that his most significant monument is this great and 
prosperous and successful institution, which will forever speak in the 
eloquent terms of good deeds well done by him whose mortal voice 
must remain silent in the grave. 

Having concluded these introductory remarks, the presi- 
dent, in introducing the Hon. Chauncey M. Depew, said : 

Senator Depew, who was for many years the associate and adviser 
of our late friend, and who is so intimately connected with all the 
affairs of the Equitable, has been good enough to consent to say a 
few words in memory of our friend and in connection with the dedi- 
cation of this portrait statue. I have great pleasure in introducing 
to you — you all know him already — our good friend Senator Depew. 

Mr. Depew then spoke as follows : 

My Friends: The springs of human action are necessity or 
ambition. Necessity, in numberless instances, has aroused dormant 
faculties and produced the power to forecast events, to discriminate 
in enterprises, to originate industrial successes, and to accumulate 
large fortunes. Ambition seeks fame with the pen, with the sword, 
or in statecraft. Our complex civilization, caused by invention and 
discovery and the numberless increases of human wants, has created 
a combination of necessity and ambition. When these are united, 
there exists in the highest form selfish personal motives, and also 
the impersonal purpose of benefiting mankind. This duplex talent 
endeavors in a lifetime to organize an educational institution equal to 
those which are the creation of the ages ; it interests capital for the 
building and endowment of hospitals or asylums for special purposes ; 
it unites and harmonizes independent systems of transportations, 
which crystalhze into a workable unit of great public benefit ; or it 
tries to found an institution which will work actively and untiringly 
for the promotion of human welfare and happiness. The best type 
of this class, and the one whose name is most likely to survive, is 
Henry B. Hyde. It was my privilege recently to deHver at Wash- 
ington the address at the unveihng of the statue of a distinguished 



APPENDIX 241 

soldier and statesman. Congress had voted the money for the me- 
morial, and the occasion was honored by the presence of the Presi- 
dent and his cabinet and the chiefs of the army and navy of the 
United States. It was a distinction and honor to the memory of a 
soldier and statesman eminently deserved, and yet om^ country has 
been singularly rich in soldiers and statesmen. Almost every square 
of the capital holds and cherishes the bronze figure of a man who 
has done so much for his country that a grateful people wish to keep 
him in this way in lasting remembrance. 

There have been different inspirations for the youth at distinct 
periods of American history. The Revolution produced states- 
men of creative genius, like Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, the 
Adamses, Roger Sherman, and their compatriots. For fifty years 
young men who had the energy and ability to rise studied the lessons 
in the careers of these Revolutionary worthies. Then ideals changed 
to men of eloquence at the bar and in the Senate — to men who could 
interpret the spirit of our institutions and give it lasting form in mea- 
sures for the expansion and growth of the country ; and these ideals 
were long personified in the triumvirate of Webster, Clay, and Cal- 
houn. The Civil War developed the fighting passions of our race, 
and there came to the front an extraordinary number of soldiers with 
rare capacity for command, both in the regular and volunteer army. 
Since the Civil War the onrush of material prosperity has swept the 
ingenuous youth of the country from the farms, the apprentices' 
benches, and the colleges into the vortex of business activities, specu- 
lations, and accumulations, and made a million dollars the mark and 
more millions the ambition of the boys of our land. At the time 
when this passion was succeeding the wave of patriotism and willing- 
ness to die for one's country, Henry B. Hyde had resolved to make 
the definite purpose of his life the building up of a life assurance as- 
sociation which should lead all others in its financial responsibilities 
and the rapidity and solidity of its growth. All those faculties which 
make mammoth fortunes — foresight and courage, the magnetism 
which compels capitalists to listen and invest, and the initiative and 
originality which use wealth as it accumulates for greater and still 
greater ventures and triumphs — were possessed by Mr. Hyde in an 
eminent degree. Had he entered the race for riches then opening 
he would have been, at his death, in the front rank of those whose 



242 



APPENDIX 



possessions made in a single life are the marvel of our time. But he 
had a broader view, from which he never turned from the commence- 
ment to the close. He started with an institution on the same basis 
and with the same opportunities as threescore of others which began 
at the same time, and all but nineteen of them went into bankruptcy. 
The company opened its offices with a small amount of stationery 
purchased with the Hmited means of the promoter. Though his 
acquaintance was not large, he succeeded in bringing into the direc- 
tory a body of strong men. Policies of ten thousand dollars taken 
out by each director and a hundred thousand dollars deposited in 
Albany as security was the commencement of the business of the 
Equitable Life Assurance Society. Trials of competition, trials of 
the usual periods of discouragement, trials of losses greater than 
gains, trials of financial situations well-nigh hopeless, trials of the dis- 
astrous panics of the last half-century, trials of the sudden changes in 
investment values caused by revolutions of our industrial system, came 
to his company, as they did, ruinously, to most of his rivals, to be 
triumphantly surmounted by his genius. He gathered about him, as 
did Napoleon in war, a body of agents whom he inspired with his 
own indomitable purpose, resistless will, and magnificent hopefulness 
to go out into the country, educate the people to the value of the 
security there is in life insurance, and to persuade them that although 
other companies might be greater and have vaster accumulations, 
their safety was in the Equitable. 

At the end of forty years, when, exhausted with his labors, Henry 
B. Hyde was called to his rest and reward, he left behind this won- 
derful monument. His 30 policies have grown to 374,000, his out- 
standing assurance has increased to $1,117,000,000. The Society 
has paid out to pohcy-holders $350,000,000, and still retains assets 
of $305,000,000, of which $66,000,000 is surplus for the security of 
those who have confided in it. That $305,000,000 might easily 
have been the sum left by Mr. Hyde to his children had he apphed 
the same energy and genius to his private fortune that he gave to the 
company which he loved so well, and for which he worked with his 
whole heart and soul and mind. I know of no more startling con- 
trast than this $305,000,000, if devised to a single family with all the 
possibilities of its use or misuse in the succeeding generations, and 
that sum held in trust by a company managed by able and compe- 



APPENDIX 243 

tent trustees to keep from want hundreds of thousands of famihes when 
the bread-winner is gone, and to educate and place in paths of useful- 
ness hundreds of thousands of orphaned or half-orphaned children. 

The growth and expansion and usefulness of this beneficent insti- 
tution does not stop with the death of its founder. He builded for 
all time. His spirit and purpose live in and are the motive power of 
the Equitable Society. Like all truly great men and strong execu- 
tive officers, he did not fear to have able associates. He sought 
everywhere the best available talent, and used every inducement to 
secure it for every department of his service. It is the weakness of 
most corporations that their managers fear to be eclipsed by able and 
ambitious subordinates ; but, as Napoleon selected for his marshals 
soldiers as near his own standard as possible, so Mr. Hyde brought, 
from every walk in life, those who impressed him because of their 
success and the possession of talents which might be used to advance 
the interests of his company. These men, as officers and directors, 
continuing through time to fill the vacancies by selections of their 
kind, will keep the Equitable marching on. It is no wild prediction 
that, on one hand, it may become in the future the most powerful 
financial institution in the world, and, on the other, its security, per- 
petuity, and growth may attract so many that its enlarging benefi- 
cence will reach and protect constantly increasing thousands upon 
thousands of people, not only in the United States, but in almost 
every civilized country in the world. 

Time obliterates from current thought and recollection the states- 
men, the soldiers, and the great fortunes of preceding generations, 
but as the Equitable rounds up each of its cycles for centuries to 
come, it will celebrate the name and achievements of its founder. 

The Equitable Life Assurance Society to-day places in the vesti- 
bule of the great building which houses its transactions the statue of 
its founder. I know of no form of human achievement equal to the 
creation, continuance, and development of this company for keeping 
alive forever the name and work of any man. Succeeding genera- 
tions who are increasing beneficiaries will hold in grateful remem- 
brance Henry B. Hyde. 

At the conclusion of Senator Depew's address, the Amer- 
ican flag which enveloped the statue was removed by Fourth 



244 



APPENDIX 



Vice-President Mclntyre, who was for many years Mr. Hyde's 
private secretary. President Alexander then spoke as 
follows : 

The ceremonies appropriate to this great occasion are ended : the 
directors and friends gathered here to do honor to a great name 
have witnessed the unveihng of this statue erected to the memory of 
Henry Baldwin Hyde, founder of the Equitable Life Assurance So- 
ciety of the United States. We now reverently and affectionately 
dedicate this monument to the memory of our departed friend and 
leader. 



j8»> J'oisoa 



JAN 18 1902 



-f 



